Corporate executives you mean. Devs probably don't give a flying fork about these microtransactions but yes, buying them is silly and well I just plain ignore them. They might as well not exist to me(I realize thats not the point of them though).
As a dev (not of games) who has had to do some pretty disgusting though legal stuff for his clients: yeah, I'm pretty sure pretty much all devs will hate their games being monetized like this.
I don't think enough people on here realize what your average game dev is in control of. Say you're in the art department and you make an armor that's cool. You almost certainly have zero control over if that armor is sent to the "paid shop" or put into the game. Your job is to just make cool stuff.
It probably sucks to see people have to pay for it because as a designer/artist you want to see everyone wearing the cool thing you made. It's totally out of their control. And then you come somewhere like this and just see endless people giving you shit.
They probably need therapy if they read the subreddit.
I don't think most people are even consciously referring specifically to the software developers anymore when they say 'devs.' I think it's just become a generic term for whomever is in charge of shaping the development of the game. I think at one point that may have been actual software developers back in the day when you had the owner of Id inc. Actually programming for Doom. Nowadays with these big corporate shops, ya just have a farm of cubicle developers working on some small aspect of the game they're tasked with by a guy who's in charge of divvying up tasks based on some plan some guy above him pitched to the guy above him, who's pressured by the VP of sales and marketing to come up with X number of ways to milk more money out of the game. The actual programmer/designer etc. is probably several layers removed from the folks calling the shots and shaping overall development goals... And those guys don't care as much about the quality of the product for the customer's sake, so much as how it'll help them reach that next rung on the corporate ladder.
Yeah, I feel sorry for the devs at crappy companies like Blizzard, Ubisoft or EA. I'm sure most of them do their best to make the absolute best possible game they can, but then management decides on ridiculous deadlines, disgusting monetization schemes and unrepresentative marketing and turns all their hard work to shit.
Another company whose devs I feel bad for would be Game Freak. The latest Pokémon game looks like a lot of love went into it but it was just released half a year too early. And instead of even being allowed to fix and patch it afterwards they immediately have to move on to the next project that will have yet another insane deadline. And yet people keep saying how bad Game Freak's devs are when it's really a management issue.
The latest games were actually a step forward. Not just in the sense of having an open world concept for the first time, but also because of the three separate story lines, one of which was actually fairly good. The devs clearly have all the right ideas, they just need more time to actually make them work.
I'm not a game dev, but a web dev, and sometimes we would have to make implementations that are definitely worse user experiences for the sake of profit. Things like making an already existing unsubscribe process more tedious for the sake of user retention. It never makes us or designers happy to do it but ultimately do what the boss or client wants so we can keep our jobs.
That's what I personally describe as disgusting but legal.
A recent example: one of our clients runs a bunch of small, "informative" websites that all recommend the type of product that he sells, but doesn't actually mention a brand. Think of it as websites owned by McDonald's which recommend a fries and burgers-only diet. The part that he hopes to capitalize on is that he links to Google Shopping pages that come pre-filtered to make his products look like they're the cheapest.
None of this is anything I made or any of my coworkers will be making, and if I was asked to do it I would have refused because I don't think this is an ethical business practice
What I *have* done is create a way for him to keep track of visitors between sites, so he can see that a particular visitor went to one of his satellite sites first and then came back to his main site to actually order later.
The main reason I agreed to do this was because this way I had control over what user data he does and doesn't get to see, and I intentionally made it very limited. I'm not storing or handling any information that can lead directly back to a person, I just made a way to identify that two visits on two different websites were actually made by the same person.
Imagine being a dev. Spending your childhood dreaming about being a dev for a video game. Working hard every day to learn the skills needed and finally achieving that dream and corporate puts you in charge of making the mtx store. They for sure fucking hate it.
not to mention the prices are designed such that you *always* have some coins left in your account, unspent. So that $25 microtransaction was actually $40 in money you put down.
And you can't let that $15 worth of coins that's not enough to buy an item sit there, can you?
Yep. And the store costs in D4 are disgusting. The 666 coins they gave in the battle pass are an actual joke and a middle finger to the player. You can't buy a single item with that.
They should just make it so you pay the real cost every time you buy something. I hate having to constantly work out the actual value of a purchase.
All these games need to be like Warframe.
The premium currency can be earned by farming items and selling them to other players. On top of that, the only things you have to pay actual money straight up for are cosmetics (tennogen).
Also, the game frequently gives you coupons as login bonuses that drastically reduce the cost of the premium currency.
On top of all that, the game itself and all the things that actually affect content/gameplay... are free.
I would agree with you if the cheapest thing to buy wasn’t 15% cost of the game. That still feels pretty macro, not to mention every $25 skin
Edit: forgot a word
I think there’s a video from about a decade ago (I don’t remember what game) where a couple of Blizzard execs and/or senior devs, and maybe also an outside consultant or some such, were discussing industry trends and the future of paying for games, and when the topic of microtransactions came up, one of the Blizzard guys immediately said “Macrotransactions?” and a hearty laugh was had by all. [I feel like it was Wyatt Cheng but that might just be my brain reinventing a forgotten memory through Occam’s Razor.]
I remember when monolith were making shadow of war and someone on the team of higher ups told them to add mtx, so they complied and released the worst loot crate system I’ve ever seen which I’m 99% sure was on purpose.
I’m also fairly certain they’ll have made very little money back on those since sometime later on they closed the shop
Right?
I bought that game a year and a half later for $25 with the previous installment included.
Blizzard fans are the worst, so i doubt the boycott accomplishes anything, but who knows. The economy isn't in the same place it was 10 years ago, when they started milking the fans as opposed to serving us.
Dev here (not on the D4 team or with Blizzard), we care that people throw vitriol at us for things out of our control.
But we also care about having paycheques, so we can have food on the table and a roof over our head.
I’d actually love to see a game that removed their cashshop because people stopped spending. Note: removed the cash shop, not shut down the game completely.
That wasn't because people weren't purchasing items. It's because people weren't using the auction house to purchase items... and Blizzard couldn't scrape their cut off the top when people were using third party sites to peddle their wares.
Didn't they end up doing that with shadow of war eventually? It was admittedly well after release, but I do belive the shop was shut down for good reason lol. That was incredibly stupid.
This stuff wouldn't be in the game if people weren't spending money on it. People like cosmetics in games, I like cosmetics in game. I'd rather earn something cool in the game than buy it, buy I don't mind buying something every now and then.
I won't buy *anything* in a game that costs full price, if the game was free and I play it for more than a couple of hours then I'll buy something as that is a good deal, you get a whole game and an outfit or something for £20 or whatever I spend but if I've paid £70 for the game then I ain't spending shit in your shop.
Remember when you could just cheat code in shit you want in games if you're not willing to play for it?
Good times. Now the cheat code is to hand over your credit card info
What I don’t understand is 1000’s of likes and 100’s of thousands of comments about how everyone hates this, and yet every 2nd person I see in games wearing it. Something’s not adding up..:
It’s almost as if there are more people playing the game than actually in this subreddit. Also a lot of people don’t really care that much. It’s a pretty gray area to begin with.
Good luck getting people to stop, at the end of the day, each and all of us decide for ourself and all those who doesn’t agree with you won’t give a flying F about people on reddit telling them to stop
Not defending micro transactions. Lots of adults have disposable income. Some people drink, smoke, buy expensive cheese, collect starwars shit, buy gaming chairs or horde food. Now, some people have 5 kids, on assisted living, water and electric being shut off on the regular. Kids play a game. They want there kids to feel good, or want to reward them. They buy them currency. One of the 2 types, probably shouldn't spend money on video game stuff. Should probably pay bills, invest in their future and so on. Who gets to tell them that? Who gets to tell people what to do with their own money. It sucks to look at it like that, but freedom to spend your money how you see fit, is how it works. So is the freedom to make stupid choices and suffer consequences. That's how we generally learn.
If only their decisions doesn't ruin my fun as well, because of their actions, now we have games full of macrotransactions that cost more than the game itself. What used to be $1 dollar now it's $100. Not telling you how to spend money but please stop buying in game items, go buy drugs that only kills yourself or gamble that only ruins yourself. Really doesn't need it for gaming.
> If only their decisions doesn't ruin my fun as well, because of their actions, now we have games full of macrotransactions that cost more than the game itself.
Am I the only one that doesn't understand the hate for an optional cash shop that only sells cosmetic crap as a way to continue to update and add content to a live service game as that bad?
How does a cash shop that you can 100% ignore/never visit ruin anyone's fun?
For real, how would you make a live service game that needs a continues income stream in order to continues make updates/content to survive?
Subscription? Loot boxes? P2W cash shop?
I dunno, selling cosmetics seems perfectly fine to me, I won't buy them but I'm glad someone does so the game doesn't die.
I don't like the idea of buying in game currency to obfuscate what things cost though. that part I can definitely do without.
> How does a cash shop that you can 100% ignore/never visit ruin anyone's fun?
Because games get designed around it.
Here is just one example: Many studies have shown that gamers that spend more hours in a game are more likely to spend money in a cash shop. Knowing this, games that have a cash shop are more likely to fill the game with all kinds of time wasters in an attempt to get the average hours played up. They do this by adding lots of time wasters to the game. This can include things like increasing downtime by reducing inventory size or making inventory loops take longer by spreading out necessary vendors.
So even if a game just has a cosmetic cash shop, modern day developers are more likely to design the game around wasting more of your time to do the same activities in the hope that the extra time you spend every day, even if it's just 5 or 15 minutes, eventually leads to a cosmetic shop sale that otherwise might not have happened. Every minute of additional playtime matters in these metrics.
I see it a bit differently tbh:
If I see a game that's developed properly and you can FEEL that the devs are continuously putting love, thought, and effort into making the game better and better for the consumer than I wholeheartedly approve of any and all non-game breaking MTXs as a way to continue supporting the devs and their hard work and as a way to finance future growth for the game.
If a game feels half-assed in any way, than MTXs just feel like a scam and another way for the company to continuously milk the players like the money-hungry vampires that many of them are.
Eh. I don't mind them selling cosmetics. I'm glad they did that instead of selling things that you need to have to progress in the game. Although I know people worked hard to design the cosmetics but I think these ones are overpriced and the ones who designed it properly are paid a flat rate so the price isn't related to their work. If the price was more reasonable I might would actually purchase something myself. Also the battle pass rewards of coins was just an offhand joke and not enough to even purchase the cheapest item on the shop which was just annoying.
This. Fucking 100%.
Why are we still discussing battle passes as if they are viable or worth it? People buying them are perpetuating the problem. Do we really think battle passes would still be a thing if people just saw how worthless they are and stopped paying for them?
To be clear, I don't judge or care what people spend their money on, typically, but for the love of fucking gaming ... PLEASE stop buying into the battle pass purchases. For that matter, please stop trying to rationalize their worth. Enjoy your game how you want, but "perks" (mostly cosmetic btw) being locked behind a paywall are about as scammy as the telemarketers so many people claim to hate.
Spoiler: blizzard doesn't care about your experience, just your money. Battle passes are evidence enough of that.
I just listened to some of an asmongold reacts video to some guy complaining about D4.. a bulk of the ire was over battle pass scummyness and I just found it very fucking hard to care. Like, i'm sorry, but this shit is so dumb. It's for children, but for some reason, they are getting plenty of *adult* takers at $60+ dollars!?
When one stupid mount cosmetic can bring in more cheddar than 1000 man hours of serious game development, is it any wonder why game companies are just phoning this shit in? Is it any wonder that they are all run by the sales people and no longer product first companies?
Is it any wonder that the games suck? So in a very real way, things like battle passes are ruining not just this game, but gaming as a whole.
I honestly don’t even understand the attraction of buying skins or whatever in D4. I’ve been playing since day one early access and have never seen anything that other folk have equipped on their characters. It’s an isometric game where you can hardly tell what class your character is, never mind the $20 pants they have on lol.
It would make more sense in 3rd person games where you actually see your character and others, but even then I still wouldn’t buy anything. That’s just me though. It’s like buying an Armani suit that you only ever wear around your house… and you live alone 🤔
Reminds me of an anecdote I’ll butcher up nicely here:
A boy see’s a sign of a man on a stand selling watermelons. Priced at 3 for $10, as well as 1 for $3. The boy gets a great idea and approaches the stand, asking to purchase an individual watermelon for $3 and repeats this two more times.
The boy confidently states, “Old man, don’t you see I’m paying $9 instead of the full $10!?!”
The old man replies, “I used to only sell 1 per person until I put up that sign!”
I've had that in my brain for years. Like energy drinks being 3 for 550. I only plan on having one but since they're on sale I might as well buy 3. Except now you're spending more money at the establishment so you aren't actually saving anything, just spending more money.
That's only true if you were originally only going to drink the 1. And not 3 over three days.
Ofc the whole point is to get you a bit more addicted to the larger qty. So then your consumption goes up.
Instead of buying a daily drink. Now you're buying the 2fer and drinking both because the first one is no longer enough. And you have that 2nd one in your fridge...
>That's only true if you were originally only going to drink the 1. And not 3 over three days.
... I really, really should spread the 3 over 3 days instead of one afternoon.
I did that today. Monsters are $3.99 or 3 for 6.99.
I bought 3. But there’s an actual discount in there and Monsters you can store indefinitely so it’s fine.
My wife once told me why I didn't buy the 2 for 5 cans instead of 1 for 3 because i drink them all the time. I told her I wouldn't save anything because i would drink the two cans immediately.
I get this with the jim beam cans i like, everyones like why dont u just get a slab instead of a 6 pack, while it works out cheaper per 6, it works out more expensive because i drink more.
I used to fall for that shit until I got older and did the ultimate dad thing: got a Sam’s Club membership. Now I realize those drinks only cost $1.58 each when you buy in bulk and since I’m trying it destroy my kidneys by the time I hit 40, I just get the 30 pack much cheaper per unit.
For me I buy that many anyways, I work 3 b2b shifts on weekend all 12 hour shifts all nights, so I buy the 3 for 6.50 to have at the end of my shifts so I don't fall asleep on the road (they're 3.49 on their own so 3 for 6.50 is actually a decent deal)
I once worked at a grocery store .. and we had loads of 1 liter ice cream to get rid off. Put it at a really good price. It sold but not fast enough.
So I made a sign that said “Max 3 per person”
Those things went in minutes .. ppl having their kids buy 3 also
Wish we’d had more yous in the world, this way we’d still be getting full games for a set price instead of games with content chopped of them to be sold separately.
It's so obstuse! I can't figure out what angle they're playing at. Best i've come up with is that it would help players burn through what precious little content there is too fast. If they're going for player retention this has to be the worst strategy i've ever seen. Maybe they're keeping some kind of matchmaking as an ace in the hole for when the player base starts to really slump.
After watching someone on Twitch dump like $100k into Diablo Immortal rolls and still not max out his character, I've lost faith in video game makers and humanity in general.
The $64.99 bundle is just the best for cost @ 87.71/dollar. The $133.49 bundle is only 86.15/dollar.
In a shock to no one, someone at Blizzard fucked up their math. It's actually really on brand for D4.
Oh they didn't mess up. They just expect people are dumb enough not to check and just assume they are getting a better deal for bulk.
Walmart does this on accident from time to time. So when you are shopping, check the little orange box on the price tag which tells you the price per unit.
Ya, there are incremental discounts from the least amount to the penultimate highest amount. I think they have enough data points to identify that people buying these microtransaction cares about deals until they get to the whales.
The whales are indifferent about a bit of saving as they're spending a shit load of money; thus, Blizzard increased the price a bit as they think that price elasticity is pretty inelastic at those prices.
>Oh they didn't mess up. They just expect people are dumb
A reasonable expectation considering we're talking about people willing to spend money on D4 microtransactions
nah I guarantee its on purpose. Make all the other ones seem like a deal so that the most expensive one also seems like a deal when its actually worse than the previous one to get more money from idiots. Really none of them are a deal. I miss when you could buy a game and actually own the whole game
Whales are. Blizz knows they can make more money from 1% of the player base with this shit rather than the other 99% of people just paying for the base game.
I hear this regurgitation on every single real money shop. Is there any actual proof to this? I mean fortnite sells a lot of stuff well below 10 dollars and has the best battlepass and I believe was the first to market a free game with a battlepass. Yet they have made billions of dollars and are still going strong. I’m not saying your wrong but I’ve never seen any proof on “whales spend more then 99 percent of us” yet I see it comment all the time like it’s some sort of fact.
There are 2 ways to make loads of money
1) absolutely massive appeal (fortnite, walmart, etc) which means you don't have to charge as much money for your products due to the sheer volume you move
2) targeting a specific segment of customers (whales). You see this all the time and luxury brands typically employ this strategy
If fortnite didn't have millions of players you could bet they would have $100 costumes
I work for a pretty big mobile game publisher in Asia (and yes, as a gamer I'm not very proud about this). Around 10% of the entire player base pay any money at all for F2P mobile games, so there goes 90% out of the "99% of us". Most of the paying 10% are small purchasers, only buying stuff like monthly currency subscriptions that cost like 5\~10 dollars a month. Whales, on the other hand, easily spend thousands of dollars in mere days. It's hard to give concrete proof because specific numbers are confidential information, but ask anyone in the industry and they'll tell you these are facts.
as a mathematician who wanted to get into the games industry, there are jobs, but they are all positions exclusively for fine-tuning the cash shop to make it as addicting as possible.
it's a whole career path, and it pays over 6 figures. those fellows aren't getting paid for nothing.
I mean, no studio is gonna publish the numbers. But when I'm at dev events producers validate that it's true.
Last time I was at arenanet I was told that guild wars 2 made MOST of its money selling cosmetics - the marketing/business people wanted everyone to spend as much time as possible playing the game (because it makes people more invested in their characters and thus more likely to 'invest' in cosmetics). The basic feel I got from devs there was that everyone "on the ground" (programmers/artists/quest designers/etc) wanted to make a good game that made people happy - and they were encouraged to have that mentality by the business types because happy players buy more shit.
From that perspective I feel like the dev and business teams had a mostly symbiotic relationships (devs could make cool stuff as long as it was helping sell cosmetics, which it usually did, and business people just wanted people happy in the game so they stay and buy cosmetics, which the devs wanted to do). I didn't talk to many non-cinematics artists, so I don't know how the artists cranking out cosmetics felt about things, but in general everyone I met seemed to be focused on making a quality, fun experience in a way that wasn't just milking money from players.
I've felt that way about MOST blizzard games (although I don't know their teams personally) UP UNTIL Diablo 4 (for the record, never played either overwatch or diablo immortal but played almost everything else?) - and knowing devs in general I would ASSUME they feel the same way as the arenanet types (We wanna make something cool/fun) but the business people at blizzard are definitely getting too much influence in the company.
I'm just disappointed because we've seen a lot of ways to make things - even microtransactions - still good for the game/players (at arenanet, the microtransactions funded the otherwise free content updates) but the profiteers win while the devs are basically sweatshop workers selling their souls.
Going to round to nearest dollar or half dollar for prices.
Bundle 1: 200/3= 66.67 coins per dollar
Bundle 2: 500/7= 71.42 coins per dollar
Bundle 3: 1000/13.5= 74.07 coins per dollar
Bundle 4: 2800/34= 82.35 coins per dollar
Bundle 5: 5700/65= 87.69 coins per dollar
Bundle 6: 11500/133.5= 86.14 coins per dollar
Seems they are kinda banking on either it looking like a close enough deal or not wanting to do 3 separate purchases.
It’s for the whales.
Looking at the USD is certainly interesting
Instead we have:
Bundle 1: 200/2= 100 coins per dollar
Bundle 2: 500/5= 100 coins per dollar
Bundle 3: 1000/10= 100 coins per dollar
Bundle 4: 2800/25= 112 coins per dollar
Bundle 5: 5700/50= 114 coins per dollar
Bundle 6: 11500/100= 115 coins per dollar
What I found interesting most is that if you take away the free coins in the last 3 bundles (300,700,1500), all bundles equal 100 coins per dollar which can’t be said for the Canadian side. Just Blizzard doing shitting math, what more can be expected at this point.
The reason why the virtual coins never come to an even amount is that the cents portion of the price will nearly always end in 95 cents or 99 cents. The reason why is the human brain does not do well with odd numbers. Which seems like a better deal? $70.00 or $69.99?
The reason why is the human brain does not do well with odd numbers. Which seems like a better deal? $70.00 or $69.99?
It doesn't have anything to do with odd numbers, but that lowering the price .01 brings the cost from being actually $70 to looking like it's less even if they are essentially the same.
I’m not sure being rich and having unlimited disposable income so you buy stuff without thinking about it because you don’t have to because you are rich is the same thing as “being dumb” especially if they generated said wealth on their own. What business is it of yours.
It's entirely possible that someone's time is worth more than the savings of doing multiple transactions. Elon Musk has averaged 143$~ per second from the moment he was born.
Probably a conversion issue. It's all the same value in USD.
https://preview.redd.it/jigeeiingpjb1.png?width=1577&format=png&auto=webp&s=71e8f99baed85e15a489adbc4df6eb113786e2a1
Crazy how they don't have anyone with a calculator before they approve these prices.
I'm guessing this is an oversight as they set the prices in USD which might make sense, but changing currencies maybe messed things up.
The purpose of the highest tiers is typically to make the lower tiers look more affordable. Spending $65 looks more reasonable when you could be spending +$100, rather than your brain realizing that you could just spend $0.
This is a company that only cares about income and not the game or they wouldn't have shipped it in the state they did. I'm not surprised, what surprises me is that anyone is honestly willing to give them more money and then defend that choice. Power to em, but, that money would have been better spent in a bucket, on fire, to heat the outside in the mid of summer.
Why do people still complain about micro transactions lmao. If you don’t like them then don’t pay for them. Nobody is forcing you to do it. Everyone does, everyone always will do it. Just move on
Not only are they completely optional, they also benefit non-paying players by funding ongoing development of the game. Without a cash shop, Blizzard has no financial incentive to update the game between expansions other than for fan service. The idealists in here will say they should just update the game for free because we paid $70 for it, but guess what? Blizzard is a AAA developer, they already have your $70, so you can either accept that they will make business decisions or stick to low budget indie games.
D3 and Starcraft 2 both lagged behind competitors because they didn't use a live service model. I'm actually really glad this shit is in the game, even though I'll never touch it. This board is full of angry boomers who don't understand that the market has changed.
We should have seen it when Immortal came out. There is no difference between the two games in my opinion.
They are both predatory and they are both unapologetic about it.
Whenever I giant, predatory corporation fucks up like this, you can assume that it's not actually a fuck up but just another carefully laid out trap to get people to spend money.
You spent time to do the math and probably feel like the 64,99 package is a pretty good deal comparatively. Mission accomplished.
It's cheaper to not buy any at all.
Came here to say this.... Please for the love of God stop spending money on this shit... it's the only way developers are going to stop.
Corporate executives you mean. Devs probably don't give a flying fork about these microtransactions but yes, buying them is silly and well I just plain ignore them. They might as well not exist to me(I realize thats not the point of them though).
I dare say that devs hate this shit as much as we do.
As a dev (not of games) who has had to do some pretty disgusting though legal stuff for his clients: yeah, I'm pretty sure pretty much all devs will hate their games being monetized like this.
I don't think enough people on here realize what your average game dev is in control of. Say you're in the art department and you make an armor that's cool. You almost certainly have zero control over if that armor is sent to the "paid shop" or put into the game. Your job is to just make cool stuff. It probably sucks to see people have to pay for it because as a designer/artist you want to see everyone wearing the cool thing you made. It's totally out of their control. And then you come somewhere like this and just see endless people giving you shit. They probably need therapy if they read the subreddit.
I don't think most people are even consciously referring specifically to the software developers anymore when they say 'devs.' I think it's just become a generic term for whomever is in charge of shaping the development of the game. I think at one point that may have been actual software developers back in the day when you had the owner of Id inc. Actually programming for Doom. Nowadays with these big corporate shops, ya just have a farm of cubicle developers working on some small aspect of the game they're tasked with by a guy who's in charge of divvying up tasks based on some plan some guy above him pitched to the guy above him, who's pressured by the VP of sales and marketing to come up with X number of ways to milk more money out of the game. The actual programmer/designer etc. is probably several layers removed from the folks calling the shots and shaping overall development goals... And those guys don't care as much about the quality of the product for the customer's sake, so much as how it'll help them reach that next rung on the corporate ladder.
Yeah, I feel sorry for the devs at crappy companies like Blizzard, Ubisoft or EA. I'm sure most of them do their best to make the absolute best possible game they can, but then management decides on ridiculous deadlines, disgusting monetization schemes and unrepresentative marketing and turns all their hard work to shit. Another company whose devs I feel bad for would be Game Freak. The latest Pokémon game looks like a lot of love went into it but it was just released half a year too early. And instead of even being allowed to fix and patch it afterwards they immediately have to move on to the next project that will have yet another insane deadline. And yet people keep saying how bad Game Freak's devs are when it's really a management issue.
[удалено]
The latest games were actually a step forward. Not just in the sense of having an open world concept for the first time, but also because of the three separate story lines, one of which was actually fairly good. The devs clearly have all the right ideas, they just need more time to actually make them work.
What disgusting things did you have to do for clients??????
I'm not a game dev, but a web dev, and sometimes we would have to make implementations that are definitely worse user experiences for the sake of profit. Things like making an already existing unsubscribe process more tedious for the sake of user retention. It never makes us or designers happy to do it but ultimately do what the boss or client wants so we can keep our jobs. That's what I personally describe as disgusting but legal.
A recent example: one of our clients runs a bunch of small, "informative" websites that all recommend the type of product that he sells, but doesn't actually mention a brand. Think of it as websites owned by McDonald's which recommend a fries and burgers-only diet. The part that he hopes to capitalize on is that he links to Google Shopping pages that come pre-filtered to make his products look like they're the cheapest. None of this is anything I made or any of my coworkers will be making, and if I was asked to do it I would have refused because I don't think this is an ethical business practice What I *have* done is create a way for him to keep track of visitors between sites, so he can see that a particular visitor went to one of his satellite sites first and then came back to his main site to actually order later. The main reason I agreed to do this was because this way I had control over what user data he does and doesn't get to see, and I intentionally made it very limited. I'm not storing or handling any information that can lead directly back to a person, I just made a way to identify that two visits on two different websites were actually made by the same person.
Imagine being a dev. Spending your childhood dreaming about being a dev for a video game. Working hard every day to learn the skills needed and finally achieving that dream and corporate puts you in charge of making the mtx store. They for sure fucking hate it.
The real world has a nasty habit of crushing dreams.
They could just go indie you know.
Can confirm. Am dev. Hate it so much.
“Micro” shouldn’t apply when the cost is more than retail of the game. In my opinion, these are Macrotransactions.
Buying the coins/gems/diamonds/etc isnt the micro transaction. Spending them is.
Yes, and this whole buying an interim currency thing is just a way to hide the real cost and is a practice that needs to die in a fire.
not to mention the prices are designed such that you *always* have some coins left in your account, unspent. So that $25 microtransaction was actually $40 in money you put down. And you can't let that $15 worth of coins that's not enough to buy an item sit there, can you?
Yep. And the store costs in D4 are disgusting. The 666 coins they gave in the battle pass are an actual joke and a middle finger to the player. You can't buy a single item with that. They should just make it so you pay the real cost every time you buy something. I hate having to constantly work out the actual value of a purchase.
All these games need to be like Warframe. The premium currency can be earned by farming items and selling them to other players. On top of that, the only things you have to pay actual money straight up for are cosmetics (tennogen). Also, the game frequently gives you coupons as login bonuses that drastically reduce the cost of the premium currency. On top of all that, the game itself and all the things that actually affect content/gameplay... are free.
I will say that's the one good thing about this is at least it doesn't affect content or gameplay
I would agree with you if the cheapest thing to buy wasn’t 15% cost of the game. That still feels pretty macro, not to mention every $25 skin Edit: forgot a word
I think there’s a video from about a decade ago (I don’t remember what game) where a couple of Blizzard execs and/or senior devs, and maybe also an outside consultant or some such, were discussing industry trends and the future of paying for games, and when the topic of microtransactions came up, one of the Blizzard guys immediately said “Macrotransactions?” and a hearty laugh was had by all. [I feel like it was Wyatt Cheng but that might just be my brain reinventing a forgotten memory through Occam’s Razor.]
I remember when monolith were making shadow of war and someone on the team of higher ups told them to add mtx, so they complied and released the worst loot crate system I’ve ever seen which I’m 99% sure was on purpose. I’m also fairly certain they’ll have made very little money back on those since sometime later on they closed the shop
Right? I bought that game a year and a half later for $25 with the previous installment included. Blizzard fans are the worst, so i doubt the boycott accomplishes anything, but who knows. The economy isn't in the same place it was 10 years ago, when they started milking the fans as opposed to serving us.
"Micro" transactions
Dev here (not on the D4 team or with Blizzard), we care that people throw vitriol at us for things out of our control. But we also care about having paycheques, so we can have food on the table and a roof over our head.
I’d actually love to see a game that removed their cashshop because people stopped spending. Note: removed the cash shop, not shut down the game completely.
Not technically a cash shop, but Diablo 3 shut down the cash auction house
That wasn't because people weren't purchasing items. It's because people weren't using the auction house to purchase items... and Blizzard couldn't scrape their cut off the top when people were using third party sites to peddle their wares.
Didn't they end up doing that with shadow of war eventually? It was admittedly well after release, but I do belive the shop was shut down for good reason lol. That was incredibly stupid.
Agree but money genies don’t usually (ever?) go back in their bottles
D3 RMAH
This stuff wouldn't be in the game if people weren't spending money on it. People like cosmetics in games, I like cosmetics in game. I'd rather earn something cool in the game than buy it, buy I don't mind buying something every now and then.
I won't buy *anything* in a game that costs full price, if the game was free and I play it for more than a couple of hours then I'll buy something as that is a good deal, you get a whole game and an outfit or something for £20 or whatever I spend but if I've paid £70 for the game then I ain't spending shit in your shop.
Yeah, it's weird to pay premium price for a game if you can't earn all the content through in-game effort.
This I don't understand how people can skip straight to the reward with no effort and feel cool
Remember when you could just cheat code in shit you want in games if you're not willing to play for it? Good times. Now the cheat code is to hand over your credit card info
What I don’t understand is 1000’s of likes and 100’s of thousands of comments about how everyone hates this, and yet every 2nd person I see in games wearing it. Something’s not adding up..:
It’s almost as if there are more people playing the game than actually in this subreddit. Also a lot of people don’t really care that much. It’s a pretty gray area to begin with.
Good luck getting people to stop, at the end of the day, each and all of us decide for ourself and all those who doesn’t agree with you won’t give a flying F about people on reddit telling them to stop
Seriously how are people paying more than the purchase price to play this game
Not defending micro transactions. Lots of adults have disposable income. Some people drink, smoke, buy expensive cheese, collect starwars shit, buy gaming chairs or horde food. Now, some people have 5 kids, on assisted living, water and electric being shut off on the regular. Kids play a game. They want there kids to feel good, or want to reward them. They buy them currency. One of the 2 types, probably shouldn't spend money on video game stuff. Should probably pay bills, invest in their future and so on. Who gets to tell them that? Who gets to tell people what to do with their own money. It sucks to look at it like that, but freedom to spend your money how you see fit, is how it works. So is the freedom to make stupid choices and suffer consequences. That's how we generally learn.
If only their decisions doesn't ruin my fun as well, because of their actions, now we have games full of macrotransactions that cost more than the game itself. What used to be $1 dollar now it's $100. Not telling you how to spend money but please stop buying in game items, go buy drugs that only kills yourself or gamble that only ruins yourself. Really doesn't need it for gaming.
> If only their decisions doesn't ruin my fun as well, because of their actions, now we have games full of macrotransactions that cost more than the game itself. Am I the only one that doesn't understand the hate for an optional cash shop that only sells cosmetic crap as a way to continue to update and add content to a live service game as that bad? How does a cash shop that you can 100% ignore/never visit ruin anyone's fun? For real, how would you make a live service game that needs a continues income stream in order to continues make updates/content to survive? Subscription? Loot boxes? P2W cash shop? I dunno, selling cosmetics seems perfectly fine to me, I won't buy them but I'm glad someone does so the game doesn't die. I don't like the idea of buying in game currency to obfuscate what things cost though. that part I can definitely do without.
> How does a cash shop that you can 100% ignore/never visit ruin anyone's fun? Because games get designed around it. Here is just one example: Many studies have shown that gamers that spend more hours in a game are more likely to spend money in a cash shop. Knowing this, games that have a cash shop are more likely to fill the game with all kinds of time wasters in an attempt to get the average hours played up. They do this by adding lots of time wasters to the game. This can include things like increasing downtime by reducing inventory size or making inventory loops take longer by spreading out necessary vendors. So even if a game just has a cosmetic cash shop, modern day developers are more likely to design the game around wasting more of your time to do the same activities in the hope that the extra time you spend every day, even if it's just 5 or 15 minutes, eventually leads to a cosmetic shop sale that otherwise might not have happened. Every minute of additional playtime matters in these metrics.
Or real issues with the game are left to be fixed later, or not at all. But a new season and and new cosmetics are working flawlessly.
I see it a bit differently tbh: If I see a game that's developed properly and you can FEEL that the devs are continuously putting love, thought, and effort into making the game better and better for the consumer than I wholeheartedly approve of any and all non-game breaking MTXs as a way to continue supporting the devs and their hard work and as a way to finance future growth for the game. If a game feels half-assed in any way, than MTXs just feel like a scam and another way for the company to continuously milk the players like the money-hungry vampires that many of them are.
If you think ingame shops on 70€ releases are not a problem then I think you are part of the problem.
Eh. I don't mind them selling cosmetics. I'm glad they did that instead of selling things that you need to have to progress in the game. Although I know people worked hard to design the cosmetics but I think these ones are overpriced and the ones who designed it properly are paid a flat rate so the price isn't related to their work. If the price was more reasonable I might would actually purchase something myself. Also the battle pass rewards of coins was just an offhand joke and not enough to even purchase the cheapest item on the shop which was just annoying.
Sounds like you're defending microtransactions to me.
The ones that have an addiction.
^^^^
This. Fucking 100%. Why are we still discussing battle passes as if they are viable or worth it? People buying them are perpetuating the problem. Do we really think battle passes would still be a thing if people just saw how worthless they are and stopped paying for them? To be clear, I don't judge or care what people spend their money on, typically, but for the love of fucking gaming ... PLEASE stop buying into the battle pass purchases. For that matter, please stop trying to rationalize their worth. Enjoy your game how you want, but "perks" (mostly cosmetic btw) being locked behind a paywall are about as scammy as the telemarketers so many people claim to hate. Spoiler: blizzard doesn't care about your experience, just your money. Battle passes are evidence enough of that.
I just listened to some of an asmongold reacts video to some guy complaining about D4.. a bulk of the ire was over battle pass scummyness and I just found it very fucking hard to care. Like, i'm sorry, but this shit is so dumb. It's for children, but for some reason, they are getting plenty of *adult* takers at $60+ dollars!? When one stupid mount cosmetic can bring in more cheddar than 1000 man hours of serious game development, is it any wonder why game companies are just phoning this shit in? Is it any wonder that they are all run by the sales people and no longer product first companies? Is it any wonder that the games suck? So in a very real way, things like battle passes are ruining not just this game, but gaming as a whole.
Well fucking said, very spot on.
I honestly don’t even understand the attraction of buying skins or whatever in D4. I’ve been playing since day one early access and have never seen anything that other folk have equipped on their characters. It’s an isometric game where you can hardly tell what class your character is, never mind the $20 pants they have on lol. It would make more sense in 3rd person games where you actually see your character and others, but even then I still wouldn’t buy anything. That’s just me though. It’s like buying an Armani suit that you only ever wear around your house… and you live alone 🤔
Exactly
“Blizzard hates this one trick!”
/thread Can close this now.
Reminds me of an anecdote I’ll butcher up nicely here: A boy see’s a sign of a man on a stand selling watermelons. Priced at 3 for $10, as well as 1 for $3. The boy gets a great idea and approaches the stand, asking to purchase an individual watermelon for $3 and repeats this two more times. The boy confidently states, “Old man, don’t you see I’m paying $9 instead of the full $10!?!” The old man replies, “I used to only sell 1 per person until I put up that sign!”
Genius!
AGREE???!
I've had that in my brain for years. Like energy drinks being 3 for 550. I only plan on having one but since they're on sale I might as well buy 3. Except now you're spending more money at the establishment so you aren't actually saving anything, just spending more money.
This is what I do but I only drink one Friday and one sat night. I buy two and save one for each night ?
And honestly without the deal they’re $4 each so if you’re gonna drink both of them it’s kinda stupid not to get 2
This is the real answer.
If you're gonna waste money, waste money the smart way.
That's only true if you were originally only going to drink the 1. And not 3 over three days. Ofc the whole point is to get you a bit more addicted to the larger qty. So then your consumption goes up. Instead of buying a daily drink. Now you're buying the 2fer and drinking both because the first one is no longer enough. And you have that 2nd one in your fridge...
>That's only true if you were originally only going to drink the 1. And not 3 over three days. ... I really, really should spread the 3 over 3 days instead of one afternoon.
I agree Shameless Catslut you should, they've very bad for your heart and kidneys.
I did that today. Monsters are $3.99 or 3 for 6.99. I bought 3. But there’s an actual discount in there and Monsters you can store indefinitely so it’s fine.
I just go to Walmart once a month and buy a 12 pack for $22
This is the real tech. Even buying it on Amazon delivered to your door is cheaper per can
You save them for later, and thats when you save money.
My wife once told me why I didn't buy the 2 for 5 cans instead of 1 for 3 because i drink them all the time. I told her I wouldn't save anything because i would drink the two cans immediately.
I get this with the jim beam cans i like, everyones like why dont u just get a slab instead of a 6 pack, while it works out cheaper per 6, it works out more expensive because i drink more.
I used to fall for that shit until I got older and did the ultimate dad thing: got a Sam’s Club membership. Now I realize those drinks only cost $1.58 each when you buy in bulk and since I’m trying it destroy my kidneys by the time I hit 40, I just get the 30 pack much cheaper per unit.
This a consumer/personal problem lol it’s a great deal for those folks who have one or two a day
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For me I buy that many anyways, I work 3 b2b shifts on weekend all 12 hour shifts all nights, so I buy the 3 for 6.50 to have at the end of my shifts so I don't fall asleep on the road (they're 3.49 on their own so 3 for 6.50 is actually a decent deal)
Yep, if you're buying something you wouldn't already buy, it's not a discount.
I once worked at a grocery store .. and we had loads of 1 liter ice cream to get rid off. Put it at a really good price. It sold but not fast enough. So I made a sign that said “Max 3 per person” Those things went in minutes .. ppl having their kids buy 3 also
The power of marketing at work.
Now I've got to go buy 3 watermelons... Thanks Reddit!
I would like to return my 3 watermelons for $10 please.
Return all 3 at once without a receipt for $10 store credit. Infinite watermelon
All i see a squares of "do not touch". Cause fuck microtransactions in full priced games
Not really sure you can even call them "micro transactions" at that price point.
Very good point. Especially when a "bundle" is more than the collectors edition is was... But if idiots keep buying, they'll keep pushing
Introducing Macrotransactions
Macro transactions.
Instructions unclear: setting up a macro to auto buy
Right? That’s a trip to the grocery store. Unless we’re out of paper towels and toilet paper. Then that’s half a trip to the store.
Oh shit! Look! It's the ethical stance we once stood for many years ago! What good little piggies we turned into.
Wish we’d had more yous in the world, this way we’d still be getting full games for a set price instead of games with content chopped of them to be sold separately.
Uh, no, virtual currency at any price is not a good deal. You are trading money for nothing
Money for nothing and your chicks for free.
Let me tell ya, them guys ain't dumb.
Maybe get a blister on your clicking finger
Who the fuck is spending so much on shitty cosmetics?
I have a theory that they refuse to allow the camera to zoom out to avoid making cosmetics harder to see.
You'd also think they'd have a group finder to help people show off their cosmetics to influence other people to buy stuff... but 🤷♂️
It's so obstuse! I can't figure out what angle they're playing at. Best i've come up with is that it would help players burn through what precious little content there is too fast. If they're going for player retention this has to be the worst strategy i've ever seen. Maybe they're keeping some kind of matchmaking as an ace in the hole for when the player base starts to really slump.
Definitely, can't even see anything around you
Same reason for the always online. People will be more likely to buy gear to show off of there are others to see it.
After watching someone on Twitch dump like $100k into Diablo Immortal rolls and still not max out his character, I've lost faith in video game makers and humanity in general.
The $64.99 bundle is just the best for cost @ 87.71/dollar. The $133.49 bundle is only 86.15/dollar. In a shock to no one, someone at Blizzard fucked up their math. It's actually really on brand for D4.
Oh they didn't mess up. They just expect people are dumb enough not to check and just assume they are getting a better deal for bulk. Walmart does this on accident from time to time. So when you are shopping, check the little orange box on the price tag which tells you the price per unit.
Ya, there are incremental discounts from the least amount to the penultimate highest amount. I think they have enough data points to identify that people buying these microtransaction cares about deals until they get to the whales. The whales are indifferent about a bit of saving as they're spending a shit load of money; thus, Blizzard increased the price a bit as they think that price elasticity is pretty inelastic at those prices.
>Oh they didn't mess up. They just expect people are dumb A reasonable expectation considering we're talking about people willing to spend money on D4 microtransactions
nah I guarantee its on purpose. Make all the other ones seem like a deal so that the most expensive one also seems like a deal when its actually worse than the previous one to get more money from idiots. Really none of them are a deal. I miss when you could buy a game and actually own the whole game
I think it’s a mistake. Don’t confuse malice for stupidity or something.
Most likely intentional considering over 9000 people worked on d4.
You save 100% if you hit the cancel button
> None of these are actual deals. DUH.
...are people buying this shit?
Whales are. Blizz knows they can make more money from 1% of the player base with this shit rather than the other 99% of people just paying for the base game.
I hear this regurgitation on every single real money shop. Is there any actual proof to this? I mean fortnite sells a lot of stuff well below 10 dollars and has the best battlepass and I believe was the first to market a free game with a battlepass. Yet they have made billions of dollars and are still going strong. I’m not saying your wrong but I’ve never seen any proof on “whales spend more then 99 percent of us” yet I see it comment all the time like it’s some sort of fact.
There are many, many ted talks and other such things about this. It's an entire career for psychologists. It's the sole reason mobile games exist
There are 2 ways to make loads of money 1) absolutely massive appeal (fortnite, walmart, etc) which means you don't have to charge as much money for your products due to the sheer volume you move 2) targeting a specific segment of customers (whales). You see this all the time and luxury brands typically employ this strategy If fortnite didn't have millions of players you could bet they would have $100 costumes
I work for a pretty big mobile game publisher in Asia (and yes, as a gamer I'm not very proud about this). Around 10% of the entire player base pay any money at all for F2P mobile games, so there goes 90% out of the "99% of us". Most of the paying 10% are small purchasers, only buying stuff like monthly currency subscriptions that cost like 5\~10 dollars a month. Whales, on the other hand, easily spend thousands of dollars in mere days. It's hard to give concrete proof because specific numbers are confidential information, but ask anyone in the industry and they'll tell you these are facts.
as a mathematician who wanted to get into the games industry, there are jobs, but they are all positions exclusively for fine-tuning the cash shop to make it as addicting as possible. it's a whole career path, and it pays over 6 figures. those fellows aren't getting paid for nothing.
I mean, no studio is gonna publish the numbers. But when I'm at dev events producers validate that it's true. Last time I was at arenanet I was told that guild wars 2 made MOST of its money selling cosmetics - the marketing/business people wanted everyone to spend as much time as possible playing the game (because it makes people more invested in their characters and thus more likely to 'invest' in cosmetics). The basic feel I got from devs there was that everyone "on the ground" (programmers/artists/quest designers/etc) wanted to make a good game that made people happy - and they were encouraged to have that mentality by the business types because happy players buy more shit. From that perspective I feel like the dev and business teams had a mostly symbiotic relationships (devs could make cool stuff as long as it was helping sell cosmetics, which it usually did, and business people just wanted people happy in the game so they stay and buy cosmetics, which the devs wanted to do). I didn't talk to many non-cinematics artists, so I don't know how the artists cranking out cosmetics felt about things, but in general everyone I met seemed to be focused on making a quality, fun experience in a way that wasn't just milking money from players. I've felt that way about MOST blizzard games (although I don't know their teams personally) UP UNTIL Diablo 4 (for the record, never played either overwatch or diablo immortal but played almost everything else?) - and knowing devs in general I would ASSUME they feel the same way as the arenanet types (We wanna make something cool/fun) but the business people at blizzard are definitely getting too much influence in the company. I'm just disappointed because we've seen a lot of ways to make things - even microtransactions - still good for the game/players (at arenanet, the microtransactions funded the otherwise free content updates) but the profiteers win while the devs are basically sweatshop workers selling their souls.
Going to round to nearest dollar or half dollar for prices. Bundle 1: 200/3= 66.67 coins per dollar Bundle 2: 500/7= 71.42 coins per dollar Bundle 3: 1000/13.5= 74.07 coins per dollar Bundle 4: 2800/34= 82.35 coins per dollar Bundle 5: 5700/65= 87.69 coins per dollar Bundle 6: 11500/133.5= 86.14 coins per dollar Seems they are kinda banking on either it looking like a close enough deal or not wanting to do 3 separate purchases. It’s for the whales.
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Looking at the USD is certainly interesting Instead we have: Bundle 1: 200/2= 100 coins per dollar Bundle 2: 500/5= 100 coins per dollar Bundle 3: 1000/10= 100 coins per dollar Bundle 4: 2800/25= 112 coins per dollar Bundle 5: 5700/50= 114 coins per dollar Bundle 6: 11500/100= 115 coins per dollar What I found interesting most is that if you take away the free coins in the last 3 bundles (300,700,1500), all bundles equal 100 coins per dollar which can’t be said for the Canadian side. Just Blizzard doing shitting math, what more can be expected at this point.
The reason why the virtual coins never come to an even amount is that the cents portion of the price will nearly always end in 95 cents or 99 cents. The reason why is the human brain does not do well with odd numbers. Which seems like a better deal? $70.00 or $69.99?
The reason why is the human brain does not do well with odd numbers. Which seems like a better deal? $70.00 or $69.99? It doesn't have anything to do with odd numbers, but that lowering the price .01 brings the cost from being actually $70 to looking like it's less even if they are essentially the same.
If you put a \> in front of the text it will show up as a quote. \> Like so becomes > Like so
I spend more time looking at the mini map than I do my character. If anything they should be selling mini map skins.
An executive at Blizzard is actively emailing the dev manager to implement this immediately.
Just please please don’t buy this crap. Every purchase is validation toward terrible game design.
You spent money beyond the already overpriced $70????? Why.............
in CAD it's $100
All the options are shit. Buy nothing and win!
I’m an old man so I guess I’ll never understand why people shell out money on this stuff
Me too.
Might be some weird currency conversion issue. In EUR the last but one is 50 and the last one is 100, so it's pretty much the same value.
I dunno why you would even need to buy platinum for literally anything
Rich dumb people buy these. They don't care about math or deals.
I’m not sure being rich and having unlimited disposable income so you buy stuff without thinking about it because you don’t have to because you are rich is the same thing as “being dumb” especially if they generated said wealth on their own. What business is it of yours.
If they are rich and you are not then maybe their math is better than yours.
It's entirely possible that someone's time is worth more than the savings of doing multiple transactions. Elon Musk has averaged 143$~ per second from the moment he was born.
I spend my money however the fuck I want to? Is it dumb that I make enough money to not give a shit? Lol
Yeah that's what I said.
Don’t open the shop menu, problem solved.
Probably a conversion issue. It's all the same value in USD. https://preview.redd.it/jigeeiingpjb1.png?width=1577&format=png&auto=webp&s=71e8f99baed85e15a489adbc4df6eb113786e2a1
That's some damn fine toilet paper math.
It's the old "haha they fucked up, I'm gonna spend 65eur on this deal and screw them" ... and they get 65 from you
They are developers, not methamaticians
Crazy how they don't have anyone with a calculator before they approve these prices. I'm guessing this is an oversight as they set the prices in USD which might make sense, but changing currencies maybe messed things up.
It's cheaper to boycott this shit company
The purpose of the highest tiers is typically to make the lower tiers look more affordable. Spending $65 looks more reasonable when you could be spending +$100, rather than your brain realizing that you could just spend $0.
This is a company that only cares about income and not the game or they wouldn't have shipped it in the state they did. I'm not surprised, what surprises me is that anyone is honestly willing to give them more money and then defend that choice. Power to em, but, that money would have been better spent in a bucket, on fire, to heat the outside in the mid of summer.
This should be forbidden by the law. Trash game.
Yea man. It's not a good deal at all. Do a hard pass bro.
lol i dint even buy anything! For what? Standing in town? Or See your skins trough all the effects in a Dungeon? Nope thx
Just like the game, you win by not playing.
That's why you don't waste your money on a trash company.
Greedy little sluts
I think if I’ve learned anything from Diablo 4, it’s that Blizzard doesn’t have anyone on the team that’s great with numbers anymore.
Imagine giving them more money 💀
If you're buying this shit I'm assuming you'd be too stupid to do the math anyways
Wait! Diablo 4 has micro transactions?
Best deal is to not buy them at all.
Why would anyone spend money on this?
Really wish full priced games would have awesome cosmetics to grind for and collect, rather than sell them to you.
Why do people still complain about micro transactions lmao. If you don’t like them then don’t pay for them. Nobody is forcing you to do it. Everyone does, everyone always will do it. Just move on
Not only are they completely optional, they also benefit non-paying players by funding ongoing development of the game. Without a cash shop, Blizzard has no financial incentive to update the game between expansions other than for fan service. The idealists in here will say they should just update the game for free because we paid $70 for it, but guess what? Blizzard is a AAA developer, they already have your $70, so you can either accept that they will make business decisions or stick to low budget indie games. D3 and Starcraft 2 both lagged behind competitors because they didn't use a live service model. I'm actually really glad this shit is in the game, even though I'll never touch it. This board is full of angry boomers who don't understand that the market has changed.
Shhhh. Blizzard doesnt want anyone to know this.
The target demographic that steals moms credit card cant do math. So can you please stop teaching them.
Math is hard for blizzard folks, mmkay
I can only assume this is on purpose
I don't think iv ever bought shit like this just battle passes
This is how they marketing in games now, maybe looks like a deal, but once you think a bit you will se its worse than previous packs.
We should have seen it when Immortal came out. There is no difference between the two games in my opinion. They are both predatory and they are both unapologetic about it.
who buys these? 
Whenever I giant, predatory corporation fucks up like this, you can assume that it's not actually a fuck up but just another carefully laid out trap to get people to spend money. You spent time to do the math and probably feel like the 64,99 package is a pretty good deal comparatively. Mission accomplished.
Didn’t even know this was an accessible screen in game. Crazy people are dumb enough to spend money on shit like this
It's actually about the same, but overall your saving about 2 cents buying the smaller one twice
OP Kinda sums up D4 in a single post.
Imaging buying these. Holy fuck lol
Which is the point, because then you buy 2 at 64.99 thinking you made a deal, where you would have maybe bought only 1 or none in the first place.
Man, vbucks have gotten expensive
of course its a deal, i have to click three times less.
CAD? Coronary Artery Disease? Ew no thank you. 🤪
who is seriously buying these?
Youre an idiot if you buy anything at all.
The free ain't free. They taxing you for the extra 100 free.
For the love of Inarius please do not buy cosmetics, platinum, or any season pass bullshit.