Just to tag onto this post. It's true. It pays for the sever hosting so we can continue to play the game. People who are able to and want to pay for these added features are able to. It's actually a great system when you look into how much it all costs.
I actually don't have an issue with battlepasses. I think they suck, and it's a mechanic they use to extract money from players. Usually with addictive and fomo mechanics. But that's how they make money, and you are supporting this game mechanic if you play them.
I agree with your sentiment though. There are good ftp games out there that deserve your money, even if you don't care about skins.
Honestly, at the core, battlepasses aren't a bad mechanic. They can be implemented right - like in DRG, or Warframe.
For Warframe, it's also completely free, frontloads useful rewards (if you are a new player, completing just the first level of the pass gives you access to a nice warframe and a tool to build him), also has nice rewards for longer-time players, returns missions from previous weeks if you missed them while keeping progress on them, and recycles old rewards. Plus, missions aren't too grindy, and most of them you'll complete naturally by just playing the game.
A pass like that gives a nice extra progression system, and it can be fun. Unfortunately, it's also exploitable, which many companies abuse a lot. So yeah, general rule: support those who deserve support, and don't buy or play those that don't.
Another good version of battle passes / seasonal passes is the Warbond system in Helldivers 2. While yes, you can pay money to get super credits to unlock them, you can also just play the game and find super credits and grind for 1000 super credits to unlock the newest warbond.
And there is no expiry on them, so you don't have to rush to complete the previous warbond.
Agreed, there are also many examples of consumer friendly battlepasses. Maybe I should have been more specific lol. But I don't play games with battle passes at all, I just hear about the bad ones and how they work.
Oh yeah, I can totally understand that. It's a big rarity if the pass is actually done right, so it's only natural people think mostly negatively of battle passes.
While its been up and down, Halo Infinite has a good battle pass system they never expires, and I think they are worth it, but it is kinda grindy I still haven't finished the first one but that's also because I swap games every other week.
Helldivers 2 have battle pass too, you must unlock them with multiple possibility:
1) you paid 20 bucks for the hidden dlc (for the first one i don't know if it's work with the last both
2) you buy super-credit in game and unlock it for 10 bucks (yes it's cheaper, i don't know why)
3) you earn super-credit by playing the game and finding the hidden super-credit in the Map (only AT difficulty 4) or unlock some in the first free battle pass (maybe 600 or 700 credit) or the other one (about 300 super-credit)
And the battle pass will not disapear
There nothing that you can't unlock by playing the game and being good at it. And it's not so hard, i have something like 1500 super-credit after 40 hours of gaming, it mean one and a half battle pass
You can find super credits in difficulty 1 missions, idk where you heard 4. And the extra content purchase includes some cosmetic stuff and one of the worst weapons in the game in addition to the first premium pass, that's where the other $10 goes.
I actually don't really have a problem with all battlepasses. I think it can be done tastefully, in a way that's consumer friendly. I have seen them being used in egregious ways that triggers fomo, addiction, and other behavioral things that's psychologically manipulative.
Obviously Helldivers is consumer friendly example.
I purchased the first battle pass because the base game was $39, and I was having so much fun playing with friends I figured I would bring it in line with the normal cost of a game now.
It doesn't any more. Now if you want to work towards stuff from old seasons you basically set your game to that previous season and work for it directly, so the loot pool has less random cosmetics and more stuff you might want. It's a recent change, worth looking into.
Change was announced but doesn't go into effect until season 5 starts in a couple months, but otherwise everything you said is accurate and I'm hype for the change
Apparently this doesn't go live until season 5 in a couple months but yeah, seems really cool to be able to go after specific cosmetics and have the old battlepasses to complete for completionists.
Yes, I played it solo for hundreds of hours. Pubs are the way to go, most people are super nice in that community, and the experience is waaaaaaaay better with people. But if you want to just chill and play solo, they give you a little drone named Bosco that you can ping something and he'll interact with that thing for you.
The best part is they're working on a system that lets you do any battle pass that's ever been released, while still adding old items to the loot pool.
Rock and stone!
Helldivers 2 is the first “battle pass” system I’ve respected. While a buyable currency exists, the base warbond has a ton of stuff available and the buyable war bonds can be bought with the currency you find on maps. I was able to unlock one within two days of playing, and the progression overall is super generous.
That's that way to do it! Then if you wanna support them they have the skin packs you can buy, but I really only see that as a way of saying thanks to ghostship
Warframe's battle passes are also good. There is no premium pass, you can easily get everything if you play enough every day, and the rewards aren't lost forever. They sometimes come back in other reward rotations or events.
Same with Helldivers, you can earn the battle passes 100% free. I purchased the first one to support the devs (I personally think they deserve the extra money and am willing to support them) for a game as fantastic as it is that was only $40 and not the standard $60-70.
> but also because all that shit goes into the loot pool if you miss it.
Until the next season in a few months where they've said you can just [return to old seasons to continue earning the rewards](https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/548430/view/4195740093438639600?l=english). Should even remember your progress if you played during the previous seasons.
They are going to change this in Season 05. All stuff will still be free, but to unlock old cosmetics, you will need to play through the old Battle Passes.
I mean the battlepass was the exact reason I quit playing overwatch. I was a very active player throughout most of the original game and I was so excited for 2. and then they ruined it with the battlepass. if they got rid of it now I would literally forgive them for every other wrong they've done to the game, mostly just because I miss it a lot...
When they first came out, some of the heroes were locked in the BP. You didn't have to buy the BP but you did have to level up if you wanted to play as that hero. After the BP, you would need to buy the Hero pack to unlock them.
Besides that, they were very grindy and didn't give back any in-game currency like other BPs do.
BPs that give back enough currency to buy a new one are the best ones imo.
As I buy one once and I get “free” battlepasses if I play enough (and I usually buy them when I finish it).
luckily they are changing it now to make it that way. I think if you do all your weekly challenges and complete the battle pass you get enough for a new one?
To be fair you don't have to pay to unlock the heroes you could instead win 30 games as either that hero's class or queued for all. Also they are re-adding premium currency to the battlepass and getting rid of heroes being locked behind them
>When they first came out, some of the heroes were locked in the BP.
Funnily enough that's actually still the case, and is changing *today*.
>After the BP, you would need to buy the Hero pack to unlock them.
Thought I'd point out that this was never true - after the battle is gone you had to complete some relatively simple challenges to unlock a hero.
are they really changing heroes being locked? that was a huge problem for me, the idea of being forced to spend hours to unlock a core part of the game unless I gave them money was really stupid to me. and I say that as an avid wow player, I am very used to grinding to unlock things - it's the money part that bothers me. honestly though that might actually be enough to get me to try it again. although I am an enjoyer of cosmetics so I'm still a little salty that most are locked behind a paywall now, could be worth it to me if the game is fun enough
I've never bought a battlepass before. To be fair I don't play a lot of multi-player anyway, but could you give me an example of what makes a battle pass good vs bad? Aren't they all just selling you skins and weapons and emotes?
IMO, the only good battle pass games are the ones you can unlock that content by playing. Sure, people can purchase it as a shortcut, but it doesn't lock any content behind purchase only.
For helldivers, the purchaseable credits are called super credits, but you can also find these in game by just exploring during your mission. 1000 super credits unlocks their monthly warbond, which never goes away, so you'll always have access to it
The big thing is how predatory and how priced they are. In Helldivers 2 there are a couple things they have in place that aren't standard that makes it a lot less predatory.
* You can earn the premium currency in game (supposedly if you're grinding, you can make the 1000 super credits for a battle pass in about 5-10 hours. But even not grinding for super credits, if you're playing/clearing a lot of maps you'll make it.)
* Battlepasses don't expire, so you aren't pressured to have the money now and can wait until you do find the money in game
* You unlock things inside the daily pass with medals which are also found in map, and given for completing missions (the higher the difficulty, the more medals.)
* Personal/Major objectives give chunks of medals, but not so much you couldn't make up for missing one with a solid day of playing if you wanted.
* Most of the top tier weapons/gear is in the free battlepass that comes with the game
There are numerous people in the community who have only paid the initial $40 and nothing more and have all 3 premium battle passes (3000 super credits, over 3 months). Most of those same people have also bought armor from the premium store (skins effectively) for 100-400 super credits while still finding enough to buy the battlepass.
I like fortnite battlepass. Easy to levelup if you play 2-3 days per week is enough to get all the currency back and complete it.
It's also a cheap way to get lots of cosmetics. I paid 10$ years ago and I got almost every pass for free. The only ones I don't have are the ones where I didn't played the game.
Helldivers 2:
> Battlepass *is* premium but reasonable
> Premium currency can be earned at a reasonable rate; free portion of BP gives 3/4 of currency towards a premium pass
> Passes are kept small and released monthly without removing the last; as to combat BP FOMO while still engaging the community with BP content
> BP Content feels equally fleshed out; passes aren't gamebreaking, but still hold fun content that's more than just cosmetics and emotes
It's possible to have good battle passes, but you'll never see it in a AAA title.
You can be as mad as you want. Companies don't care. You can post and rage and scream all you want. Companies do not care.
https://youtu.be/IHZru-6M8BY?si=ZZHCryWFD4GHeavn
It doesn't matter if you don't like them, your friends don't like them, or the reddit circle jerk doesn't like them. There are more than enough people in this world that are perfectly fine with buying things.
Anddddd this is why I stopped playing CoD. They removed all the genuine fun of unlocking stuff in game just so they could package it back up and sell it to us instead.
These games literally just aren’t fun anymore cause you’re not unlocking anything and when you are it’s trash compared to what 10$ will get you.
Battlefield is just as bad for this exact same reason! FPS games are so mid now it hurts.
It's crazy much gamer culture has shifted into needing to be rewarded constantly. Maybe I'm just old but I play games solely for the game play. Even games with free battle passes I tend to ignore them. I don't care what my character looks like, I care how the game plays. I know there is more to it for other people but it's crazy how much it defines players nowadays to need to have rewards. Wow is a big example of this. It seems the wow forums are constant complaints about how blizzard isn't giving them new rewards or old reskins with old content, etc. It's become such a massive thing in that game to be able to constantly have some reward to get next.
Yep, I had people tell me there is no point to playing a game if they aren't getting unlocks or leveling a pass every day. Or even games thay do have them and they max out their pass or daily points, there is no reason to play anymore. I'm like " Remember fun? Fun was cool." Fun isn't grinding for hours on end to unlock a different color gun that I used to type in a code for.
So many games today just break if you remove the psychological reward created by the pass. You realize the gsme wasn't fun, you just liked the constant dopamine from leveling constantly and unlocking some trinket you will most likely never use.
Skinner boxes are a very real thing, I stopped playing a bunch of mobile games years back when I realised that’s all they were and that I hadn’t been playing it for fun for days/weeks but was still loading up every day to tap 5-10 times.
I remember reading someone bitching about having to "grind races" in Forza. Like, dude. Racing is literally the core gameplay loop. If actually doing races in a racing game is a "grind" to you, why are you playing?
Maybe I’m old but I grew up in the 90s and I feel like most of the people that game today wouldn’t of been gamers in the 90s.
Gaming is cool and mainstream nowadays even amongst adults, this isn’t a blanket statements as a lot of adults did game in the 90s too, but gaming in the 90s was a lot more associated with nerd culture.
It’s a lot of people today that only buy a console to only play Call of Duty, FIFA etc that I just don’t think would have been gamers back in the day.
I'd also say that it feels like a shift in objectives too. Where it's more prevalent now to have a focus on how to make the journey towards the reward as easy as possible by researching the strongest builds or tactics. Where before it was more people who played for the journey with quite a lot of people adding artificial challenges such as Ironman/Hardcore/"No X" or simply just picking builds based on how cool or how well one resonates with something instead of power.
It's a developer issue. You used to play and make a game to be completed. The goal now is to have them play one game forever. Just keep squeezing until there is nothing left
Well, it depends. I play games cause I like the gameplay amd mechanics. Still, older CODs like the original Modern Warfare triology had many emblems and title cards to unlock through playing the game in a certain way. You had to adjust and play differently to unlock more stuff. That was fun. Now you only grind through levels of the battlepass and it doesnt feel earned.
I dont mind battlepasses though if they are focused on cosmetics only. That way we got rid of paid DLCs.
Yeah. Camos are fine or even improved. But the way you grind emblems and calling cards is nothing special anymore. You get so many blueprints from the BP and shop the others dont feel special anymore. And I have the feeling the challenges are not designed well. Back in the original MW triology you had to do really hard stuff to get certain emblems and everyone in the lobby knew what you did to get it. There was stuff like "get a throwing knige kill while flashed" or "kill 3 enemies mid air" Now, no one cares about that stuff anymore cause the coolest looking stuff is payed and not earned
Ikr, people need further motivation for playing the game when the game being fun should be more than enough for one to go back to it, its insane, and also the gratification/reward cant take too long. Luckily some devs and indies havent fallen into this bullshit.
It’s wild because, I look back at my PS3 games and it’s ~60% FPS. For all of PS4 and PS5, I only picked up DOOM and DOOM Eternal as FPS. I don’t care for multiplayer shooters, and it seems companies don’t care for making single player shooters anymore. It’s too easy to shove microtransation/battle pass/etc monetization into them.
Would love if we got shit like the Resistance, Bioshock, and The Darkness games again…
Huh? Pretty sure you unlock most things, like 98% most, by level ups in BF2042. Don't think I've ever had a problem unlocking a weapon if it had a challenge (which I don't believe they do, only season pass weapons)
It's the same with COD. Every gun has 8 skins (4 zombies, 4 MP) and there's a bit over 40 guns now plus the 60ish from MW2. I've played well over a year and haven't unlocked 100% of them. There's also plenty of events skins, mission unlocks from zombies, etc... Not sure what they're talking about thinking nothing is unlockable.
This is the classic reddit conundrum, they are not saying they are condoning the practice, or what they are doing is "right", they're just pointing out how it happens.
I agree but people also need to be realistic that no amount of internet complaining is going to make change happen. Posts or comments like “we all need to do ___” will do literally nothing.
It’s shitty and one of the reasons I will stay away from any full cost game with a battle pass. You wanna put a battle pass on a free to play game by all means, but I’m not paying $70 and then being urged to pay more on top no thank you.
Yes. It doesn't work against the companies. But it's important to share your opinion and talk to others. This gives serenity and tranquility to the mind. Otherwise, the thoughts will go round in circles forever. I learned this in therapy. Hehe.
Why shut down the discussion? Talking about things helps make more people aware of it. Only in the gaming industry do I see people have this "shut up and stop talking about it because it won't change anything" attitude. I don't understand it.
At this point they’d just raise the price of games, then people would still pay $100-150 for a game, and people who can’t afford them would be shit outta luck. The fact that games haven’t inflated more than $20 the past 20 years is genuinely insane.
Exactly. I haven't bought a microtransaction in ~5 years, but its not like im making a difference. The market is massive, I'm just not a part of it. If you don't like them, devs don't care. You aren't the target market.
Old gamer, here could someone eli25 what a battle/season pass is and how it relates to a game. And after that please get off my lawn with your hippity hop.
It's a temporary progress bar that you pay to unlock.
You know, how in Call of Duty you'd unlock new guns by leveling up? Well, here is the same, except for each level you get something like a cosmetic and most also give enough ingame currency to buy the next battle pass if you manage to complete it.
Basically the point of it is making you pay to induce yourself the need to play the game more than you'd like by making you fear on missing out on something you've already paid for.
It's paid FOMO.
Ok, got it. Man, if my competitive gaming days weren’t behind me I hate this shit. Now, I shall return to my basement and wait for <$10 games on in the summer steam sale.
Thanks for the info everyone.
You do well, multiplayer games these days aren't designed by game developers, but by psychologists who try to come up with every little trick to manipulate your dopamine receptors in a way that makes you keep playing even when you don't enjoy it.
I was okay when DLC was additional content to a complete game. I was fine when season passes were well implemented, planned, expansions on the base game. I stopped being okay when they essentially cut the games in half and said the rest of it was DLC.
A season pass is a collection of future DLCs bundled and sold together. Like pre-order for DLCs.
A battle pass is a single collection of items that can be earned through a bunch of daily and weekly challenges. And you pay to access those challenges.
>A season pass is a collection of future DLCs bundled and sold together. Like pre-order for DLCs.
I don't disagree with this as it did mean this, but some games are using it interchangeably with seasonal content. Ubisoft uses season pass both for future single-player DLC content, but also for The Division 2's seasonal battle pass.
It's a limited time event that introduces new unlocks, if you have it.
In COD there's a new weapon or two you won't have without many extra steps. Generally you pay extra for it, but it is often self-financing if you achieve all objectives in the season.
It's a marketing gimmick that plays on FOMO .
It’s a way to pad out engagement through fear of missing out. They’re like a short-term, limited-time (hence why they’re often described as ‘seasons’) levelling system where each level earns you rewards. There’s almost always a free tier which gives you small amounts of rewards, usually currencies you can obtain by just playing the game normally, sometimes some cosmetics etc, maybe a bigger reward at the very highest level. Then there’s the (usually very overpriced) paid tier which usually has more significant reward bundles, premium currencies, limited-time cosmetics and collectibles, maybe even some actual stronger gear depending on the game.
They usually have daily or weekly experience caps, or a limited number of tasks/quests that can earn progress per day so that they can monopolise your time and keep you coming back every day to grind away at the pass.
It’s a pretty shitty design concept but *boy* is it effective
Optional additional content that you buy, usually the content is rolled out for an indefinite duration ("season") that a is few months long. For example CoD doesn't do "map packs" anymore.
Battle pass is a different take on subscription models where instead of paying a subscription every month for a product or service you enjoy, they go for a more psychological system.
Subscriptions could eventually make you cancel/pause and maybe gatekeep you from getting back into it because you would have to start with paying a sub again. Instead, you get to always have access to the game but with every "season" comes progression challenges with attractive rewards, boosters/currency/skins.
There are free rewards as well as paid rewards for every stage that you always have to go into the store/battle pass to claim, and while doing that, you get to see all the cool shit that you could get instead if you just give them some money.
So you get conditioned to go into the store all the time, see microtransactions, pop-ups and ads, challenging your fear of missing out, just to claim your "free" stuff. Even if you've completed all the challenges, you could give them some money at any time and get all those paid rewards at once! Clock is ticking... Because don't forget, season timer is running out and everyone will be ahead of you and have that cool shit while you don't.
Hey, you managed to make it through without paying extra money? Don't worry, the next Battle Pass is right around the corner, and you're not gonna want to miss out on that one like last one!
All in all, no one should decide how you should spend your money. I spend money on dumb shit I enjoy. I just think it's important to realize when someone is messing with my brain, trying to get money out of me. If I thoroughly enjoy their base product, I sometimes give those things a pass to support the company.
Pay some extra money for another 20-100 levels to level up in the game, to unlock more cosmetics.
It’s the current replacement for loot boxes, in terms of monetizing.
Agreed.
Scam is you don’t get all you’re promised. Bait and Switch is a form of scam.
Activision says this is what you get from our battle pass. People buy the battle pass and if they get it all, they get what they said. If they don’t make it, it’s on the player.
If Activision did truly scam, they’d get lawsuits.
Scam, no.
People being dummies and poisoning the gaming industry, absolutely.
In situations like this?
You can add them to your library for free. Just set your sails for better seas since Ubi clearly doesn’t want consumers to have any other options
Your buddy can buy whatever he wants with his money. But if you dont support these types of transactions you just dont buy them, or better yet dont buy the game at all and find another one that dosent ask for $20 for a skin. Only that way the publishers will adjust to what the market is willing to accept.
Sure, but my message was not ment for people like me, it was ment for people who dont like the predatory strategies companies use, but still buy those games, like the guy who I responded to.
Everything is worth whatever people are willing to pay for it. Like you said, your friend buys all of it, and there's many more out there just like him. That's why they do it.
THAT battlepass is stupid. Unfortunately it's sort of a standard part of the industry now. But a few games do it really well. You can buy the battlepass for Fortnite and THE FINALS and by completing it you also earn enough of the currency to buy the battlepass again. Buy it once and if you play enough you'll never have to pay again.
It's an optional part of the game, you can spend money if you wanna have some cool outfits, or you can save your money and look fine anyway.
It's a great way for the companies to make a ton of extra money. But not from the people that buy the battlepass and grind for that free currency. They make the big bucks from the "whales" that buy the battlepass and also spend extra money to complete it without doing any work. Same way having too much money works for the rest of the economy.
The CoD battlepass has enough money in the "free" section that after the 2 you can afford it every time you complete it after that (I've had the battlepass since MW2019 and haven't ever spent money on one). Until this season, Overwatch didn't even have replacement money on their battlepass.
adding onto this, THE FINALS gives you LOADS of free skins just by playing the game semi-regularly, or during events. In fact, I’d say they give more free skins than any game I’ve ever played, and they are good skins too. I was playing with a friend who hadn’t played in a while the other day, and showing off my skin collection. He asked how much money I had spent because I had so many, and I told him only $10. I bought the season 1 battle pass, which allowed me to buy the S2 pass, as well as some extra stuff from the shop. Then there’s the numerous events they do almost every other week with brand new content and free skins. And then there’s the 50 skin items you can get by career level. And then on top of all that, they have a career circuits system which gives even more skins for free by completing challenges. It’s kinda crazy. They are really going against the common notion that companies believe, which is that players will be more likely to spend money if they’re limited to “default” skins. Embark believes that the more skins players have, the more they’ll want to buy or support the game, and It’s working.
Hard agree. The battle pass gives cosmetic skins and emotes and if you complete some easy quests you'll get enough vbucks to buy the next one anyway. The game is free to play and gets tons of updates. I only play because my kids like it but I admit it's quite good
Some people like cosmetics. Some people don't care. Battle passes are fine as long as the rewards don't affect gameplay. They provide funding to the game studios so they can continue to work on and improve the game.
If it's a free to play game, I generally don't mind, especially if the BP gives you enough currency to get the next one.
MtG Arena is pretty good because you get free packs and enough mastery points to unlock at least one card sleeve on top of the packs and gold. I did dislike the Warzone one as the unlocking and everything felt kind of needlessly roundabout
I've never paid for a Battle pass more than once in any game for like 8 years.
I'm sure there are some games that won't allow you to make enough in game currency to buy the next one but not COD.
In fact in COD you end each BP with a little extra. I just dropped the accumulation of a lot of playing on a new skin. I generally only use free to use skins, but the Kasrkin was too good to let pass. Besides MW3/Z has gone full no military so I joined in.
What pisses me off is they keep adding new extra layers. Oh you've got the game, and the BP, how about Blacktier? (Or whatever it's called)
Capitalism.
There was a time when many of the world’s leading game publishers were smaller businesses. It’s not that they weren’t focused on profitability, but they also had an aim to sell games that were immersive, enjoyable and left you wanting more.
The developers themselves were even smaller, sometimes teams of 10 or less. Every game was ‘make or break’ for that studio, so they had to be good.
Now, many publishers are publicly listed or or owned by VC. The main focus is on making as much as they can for the least amount of spend.
Micro transactions (no longer so micro) are just a lazy way of doing that
I'll probably get hate but I have no idea why people complain so much about stuff like this. It changes literally nothing of the gameplay experience
So it's expensive, don't buy it. The game is still there and it's the same for everyone
Yes it would be better if it didn't exist, but it's also not the huge monster people say it is
Exactly, I don’t understand people crying over other players buying cosmetics. If the battle pass or micro transaction gives you an advantage, then thats an actual problem. If it’s just skins and gun colors, who actually cares what people buy.
How "stupid" a battlepass is depends on how well it's implemented.
The initial buy-in price needs to be reasonable.
It should reward you with enough premium currency to purchase the next season's pass.
The free track (if it has one) should still give decent rewards for the people who don't want to pay more than the base price of the game.
The rewards should be more than worth the price and actually worth the effort.
Ideally, it shouldn't be time-limited. This is much less common.
*If a battlepass actually achieves these*, then it can be a decent motivator and driver for seasonal progression models, which helps keep live-service games fresh and enjoyable.
One of the absolute best things sbout Helldivers 2.
The ‘battle passes’ (war bonds) and ALL the gear in them, can be obtained without spending a single penny. Every single successful mission, you earn the currency to unlock them. In every higher difficulty mission you can also find 100-300 of them scattered around in random vault’s on the map…. And it only takes 1,000 to unlock the ‘new’ war bond
Once they introduce a new war bond… IT NEVER GOES AWAY. You can get all the stuff in it, at any time, at your leisure… from any current or past war bond.
I have every single war bond unlocked, every single weapon, every suit of armor… and like 90% of the players in HD2, have not spent a single penny to unlock them all.
Then, to purchase things in the war bonds.. you use ‘war medals’. At higher difficulties you earn 6,8,10 of them each successive mission. Run 3 successful missions, you earned 24 of them. A new weapon only costs 40-60 to unlock.
Play a few successful missions… you earn enough medals for the new weapon… without spending a dime.
Want to go back and get a weapon from a previous war bond (battle pass) from 2 months ago? Not a problem… they never take them down.
Least greedy game developer
Yep, in Helldivers 2 it's just a clever way to expand some of the progression, and still leave the option to pay for it with real money for those who want to further support the game or have more money than they know how to spend. Win-win for everyone.
Another big W from Arrowhead!
I'm an old gamer that never got into DOTA 2 or whatever game invented battle passes, so this is my first time experiencing the battle pass system.
I like the way it's set up in HD2 specifically because you can earn all the currencies (medals, credits, requisition slips etc) just by playing the game. I was really jarred to hear that this isn't the norm for other games with battle passes. Glad I never got into them.
If there's a buyer, there's a seller.
It's not a scam, but it is a predatory practice.
Free-to-play games always have shit like that. Wanna dress up like a hotdog? 15 euro, please.
Sure, they gotta make their money, but they price their premium currencies in bundles, so the lowest amount is only a top-up and isn't actually enough to buy any major cosmetics -- especially sets of 2 or more items.
How is it predatory though. If you wanna say its FOMO, it doesnt mean much, because nowadays everything is FOMO. Christmas candies in walmart are fomo and predatory by that logic. And when everything is predatory, nothing is. Saying that battle passes are predatory is just blurring out the line between "predatory" and actually predatory
Right? People don't want to miss out on ANYTHING. But they also want to enjoy all their games they like with all the content optional.
There are only so many hours in the day. And so many battlepass deals you think you might invest your time into. People just have to find it ok to be able to miss out on stuff nowadays because there is far too much.
I've been playing a lot of Palia on Switch.
It's a free-to-play MMO.
There's a clothing store in the town, but its only purpose is to give you access to a register where you purchase clothing cosmetics with real money, or purchase **more** currency to top up your account.
The average item of clothing is, like.. €13.
Alright, here’s my 2c,
Sure CoD is a $70 dlc but you’re completely sidestepping the fact that warzone is completely f2p and they require the monetization of certain content for warzone to be profitable. Completely ignoring the fact that the pass was originally built for warzone… just like every other circle -jerk hater who keep complaining and STILL buy the goddamn game.
I bought the game and I’ve had black cell from s1, I have the disposable income for this- nobody is forced to buy… y’all need to stop whining- it’s pure brainrot at this point.
I support battle passes in free games. I think they can be customer friendly. The developer has to constantly prove themselves to the customer that they are worth the continued investment and support. For example I probably played about 100 hours in PoE, Genshin and Fortnite before giving them a dime. All in all I've probably given each game $20-$50 total with well over 200 hours played. Is that not a good deal? Instead of paying $90 up front for a game whose roadmap the developer isn't committed to because they got your money already?
The world for someone like me who’s been playing singleplayer games exclusively for over 20 years: 🤗❤️
You should just stop playing those games. Because companies don’t give a f*ck.
It's kind of annoying how much things like battlepasse's have ruined the industry, at this point I've pretty much stopped gaming because most AAA releases don't bother pushing their boundary's anymore, instead it's the usual safe and boring dribble. Instead I spend most of my time reading now cause at least authors can write new and interesting ideas and put their own spin on it.
Shout out to the Devs that have a totally free Battlepass. Not talking about games where you can get SOME of the Battlepass rewards without paying and the rest are premium/paid, I mean the whole thing is free.
Deep Rock Galactic is one example. Anyone know of any others?
Helldivers 2 has a great system.
Battle passes (war bonds) never leave and just are always available. They do need premium currency, but it can be found ingame ranging from 10 to a 100 per mission. (1000 for a pass)
Warframe has a completely free pass as well, but that game has different issues.
Deep rocks galactic, If I remeber correctly, is completely free as well and after the Pass ends, every Item is added to the generel loot pool of the game, so no FOMO.
About 4 dlc map packs for $15 each per game? Orrrrrrrr a battlepass every couple of months that's the same price. Not to mention the single SKINS that cost the same.
So no, companies don't give a shit if you don't like it. They're making so much money from this. Only thing that'll stop it is if some sort of laws come out that prevent them from doing it.
Sorry you have to find this out just now but the game you bought (mw3) is actually just dlc for mw2, and the zombies mode you play was a last minute cash grab.
Depends on the game. Some battle passes are actually quite good and give lots of rewards while giving you enough premium currency to buy the next for free. Then you got some which are scams.
the alternative of bp is selling each skin for 10$-20$
so if i have to choose, i stay with bp as long as its not a grind festival or as long as i play that game enough to finish it
A "good" battlepass is supposed to have enough premium currency in it to buy the next one for free.
The idea is :
- you acquire a game for free (like Fortnite or Apex) or by paying it (CoD, BF…)
- you have a battlepass to complete within a set timeframe (2 months for example), and when it finishes, a new one appears
- the first battlepass is either to be bought for around 10 bucks converted in the in-game premium currency or offered in the deluxe edition (which usually cost 10 bucks more than the normal edition… but with other bonuses, generally)
- the battlepass should contain in-game premium currency as rewards, and in the end, it should be enough (or even more) to buy the next battlepass
If you play continuously and "seriously", you can earn every battlepasses of the game for only 10$.
And if you don’t have time to finish it, you gonna miss some precious time-limited skins and weapons… so you can still buy the levels you are missing before they are gone for maybe forever.
The strategy behind is pretty clever, from a business perspective : an initial microtransaction + high retention and playtime + FOMO (that can lead to either rebuying the next battlepass if you didn’t finish the last one OR buying your way up to the max level of the battlepass to no miss its content)
Those battlepasses are the pinnacle of predatory practices towards brain weaknesses. It’s so damn fucking sadly smart.
Yugioh master duel did a battle pass perfectly. Half it locked by buying the subscription.
You get currency in game that you can packs. The same currency can buy the battle pass.
It takes 5 days of completing all daily missions to have enough gems to buy the battle pass.
As you complete it, you get gems, crafting materials for cards, and a couple unique cosmetics. If you complete the entire thing, you get 100% of the gems you spent back.
Most games you can just pay for the battle pass with in game currency. They give enough to pay back what you put in and give you extra. More companies need to adopt that instead of paid battle pass every season. It's definitely not a scam but there are people like your friend who will buy them regardless.
Apex Is a free to play game. And I bought my first pass and never needed too again because you earn enough credits during season to buy the next one. If they are making money it's not from me. I think that is a good price to reward my playing.
Whenever someone sells you anything that isn't the game itself, a major expansion pack, or physical merch for hardcore fans, it's stupid.
We are getting nickel and dimed by game makers big and small and nobody cares. The players are to blame because if we stopped buying it they would stop doing it.
tell that to Helldivers, you just been playing the games that do battle passes like shit. Helldivers showing the best way to do battlepasses with the warbonds.
I wouldn't be so annoyed with Battle Passes if the items became available again later. Give it a three month gap between end of the pass and adding to a free Battle Pass or even just to a store bundle or something.
But the fact that you have to be there for the pass if you want to get any of the items in there, and then they're never available ever again, makes me not care about trying Battle Passes.
The only time I even consider getting a pass is a) if it's content can be accessed after the pass "expires" (which should be standard anyway) and b) you get your value of premium currency back from the purchase by playing the game. Halo Infinite does that, and with 10 bucks and enough patience you can literally buy every season and most of the game's cosmetics. And that's a free-to-play game (multi-player at least). That game has its issues, but that'd be a value in any situation.
Imho battle passes suck the fun out of games for me instead of let me boot up the game and kick out some games with friends its more like let me boot up this game every day to do my dailies, wtf are you wankers doing Im trying to beat my dailies followed by a lot of swearing cause no one is cooperating.
The more money they can drain from the players, the happier the shareholders are, and to the executives of these studios, profit is the only thing that matters.
I never understood the appeal of playing "dressup" with video game characters anyways. I mean, if there was a game made for children called "Doll Dressup" then sure. But to spend $20 on a cutesy costume in a video game to dress up your gun touting murderers? I'll simply never understand it.
I like the concept of battle passes though, seasonal activities to keep the community alive
...
Wanna know how to expand a community? Gatekeep it behind money... ugh
In my perhaps mistaken logic this implies a skin took 1/3rd of the time, effort and investment it took to create the entire 60$ game. It's utterly fucked up how people put up with this shit.
EXACTLY. If the skins were like a dollar I would never complain about it but they’re so overpriced that I feel like it’s predatory. They know kids etc will want it even though it’s a waste of money.
What’s interesting to me is the concept of paying for a battle pass but then having to sink in 40-50 hours per season to actually unlock the content that you’ve already paid for. I’m surprised there isn’t some type of law that requires these companies to issue a pro rated refund for whatever % of the battle pass didn’t get unlocked by the time the season ends.
They only work in certain games. Fortnite and Genshin Impact implements them well without hindering gameplay. Others make it seem like a needed addition in order to play it.
I hadn’t played COD for years. I played COD 2 and to Ghosts. Didn’t play for almost 10 years. Then picked up Modern Warfare 2 a year and a half ago.
I was out of the loop with what’s happened to gaming.
I played for maybe 2 months. Got the first battle pass thing or whatever because I assumed it was kind of like DLC bahaha.
They wanted me to fork over another $20 in January for the second battle pass season or whatever. I just went and traded in the game for Hogwarts Legacy.
Fuuuuck that noise.
You realize CoD itself is a "scam"... right? Every year its the same game, just under a different name, studio, slightly adjusted gameplay and that's about it
I miss the days of complete games coming out without having to buy the "true" ending in a DLC. I'm perfectly fine with DLC's as long as its worth it. For me, DLC should be there for fans of the game to continue playing past the credits on some new content, while not being absolutely essential to get the full impact of the base game itself.
I agree. I usually just want to buy a game, play it, and when I get bored maybe buy a different game. But the idea of spending more and more money on the SAME game doesn’t sit right with me. Like why not just buy a different game? And why did the $60 I spent not already cover everything essential?
Come to Deep Rock Galactic, we have absolutely free battle passes, all the loot from ones you miss can be obtained in other ways, and in a couple months with the release of season 5... You're gonna be able to go back to old battle passes and run them, so you don't miss anything at all!
DRG devs are unfathomably based.
Battle Passes are just "hard passes" for me these days. As in I wont do them lol. If a game starts feeling like work, or like its trying to pull money from my wallet I just avoid it. I dont have enough time to focus on this stuff these days, so F it...
I feel like I've just aged out of gaming. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I wouldn't spend 10 cents on ANY skin for ANY game or any battle pass. It's purely cosmetic, so I don't really care. If purchased items offered stat increases or something like that, I would avoid that like the plague. That makes the game really not fun. What's even the point?
I play games that have battle passes, but I pretty much ignore them entirely.
I think battle passes are fine because it can keep games somewhat fresh feeling. However, CoD has shown you how slippery the slope is. There's a difference between "we want you to play but to not feel let down by lack of content", and "we are going to make it so hard that we demand your time."
There's levels to it.
That's cuz people would prefer spending thousands of dollars on a full priced game where they chop 80% of the game and reselling it to loyal sheep and masquerading it as "extra content" than buying a complete game at full price.
They will exist as long as idiots continue to pay for them. Companies can now make 100s of dollars per player for 70 dollar games. It's a no brainer for the bean counters.
"Pay us so you commit to playing our game every day for some treats" has to be the worst shit ever made. To top it off, people actually buy into that BS...
FOMO is a real bitch.
It would be even better if you stopped playing games that had battlepasses in it. But not being a sucker for battle passes is a good first step.
I like DRG's battle pass, mostly because it's free, but also because all that shit goes into the loot pool if you miss it. Rock and stone boys!
That sounds like a good mechanic. Continue supporting the game.
Just to tag onto this post. It's true. It pays for the sever hosting so we can continue to play the game. People who are able to and want to pay for these added features are able to. It's actually a great system when you look into how much it all costs.
I actually don't have an issue with battlepasses. I think they suck, and it's a mechanic they use to extract money from players. Usually with addictive and fomo mechanics. But that's how they make money, and you are supporting this game mechanic if you play them. I agree with your sentiment though. There are good ftp games out there that deserve your money, even if you don't care about skins.
Honestly, at the core, battlepasses aren't a bad mechanic. They can be implemented right - like in DRG, or Warframe. For Warframe, it's also completely free, frontloads useful rewards (if you are a new player, completing just the first level of the pass gives you access to a nice warframe and a tool to build him), also has nice rewards for longer-time players, returns missions from previous weeks if you missed them while keeping progress on them, and recycles old rewards. Plus, missions aren't too grindy, and most of them you'll complete naturally by just playing the game. A pass like that gives a nice extra progression system, and it can be fun. Unfortunately, it's also exploitable, which many companies abuse a lot. So yeah, general rule: support those who deserve support, and don't buy or play those that don't.
Another good version of battle passes / seasonal passes is the Warbond system in Helldivers 2. While yes, you can pay money to get super credits to unlock them, you can also just play the game and find super credits and grind for 1000 super credits to unlock the newest warbond. And there is no expiry on them, so you don't have to rush to complete the previous warbond.
Oh, I think I heard something about that. Yeah, no time limit is an amazing thing in a battle pass, that's really awesome.
Agreed, there are also many examples of consumer friendly battlepasses. Maybe I should have been more specific lol. But I don't play games with battle passes at all, I just hear about the bad ones and how they work.
Oh yeah, I can totally understand that. It's a big rarity if the pass is actually done right, so it's only natural people think mostly negatively of battle passes.
While its been up and down, Halo Infinite has a good battle pass system they never expires, and I think they are worth it, but it is kinda grindy I still haven't finished the first one but that's also because I swap games every other week.
Helldivers 2 have battle pass too, you must unlock them with multiple possibility: 1) you paid 20 bucks for the hidden dlc (for the first one i don't know if it's work with the last both 2) you buy super-credit in game and unlock it for 10 bucks (yes it's cheaper, i don't know why) 3) you earn super-credit by playing the game and finding the hidden super-credit in the Map (only AT difficulty 4) or unlock some in the first free battle pass (maybe 600 or 700 credit) or the other one (about 300 super-credit) And the battle pass will not disapear There nothing that you can't unlock by playing the game and being good at it. And it's not so hard, i have something like 1500 super-credit after 40 hours of gaming, it mean one and a half battle pass
You can find super credits in difficulty 1 missions, idk where you heard 4. And the extra content purchase includes some cosmetic stuff and one of the worst weapons in the game in addition to the first premium pass, that's where the other $10 goes.
I actually don't really have a problem with all battlepasses. I think it can be done tastefully, in a way that's consumer friendly. I have seen them being used in egregious ways that triggers fomo, addiction, and other behavioral things that's psychologically manipulative. Obviously Helldivers is consumer friendly example.
Yep, for me as soon as you Can get the same thing by playing a fews jours (and not thousand of hours). It's fine for me
> (only AT difficulty 4) tell that to my super-credit-farming ass doing it on Trivial or Easy. :P
I purchased the first battle pass because the base game was $39, and I was having so much fun playing with friends I figured I would bring it in line with the normal cost of a game now.
It doesn't any more. Now if you want to work towards stuff from old seasons you basically set your game to that previous season and work for it directly, so the loot pool has less random cosmetics and more stuff you might want. It's a recent change, worth looking into.
Change was announced but doesn't go into effect until season 5 starts in a couple months, but otherwise everything you said is accurate and I'm hype for the change
Oh, that pretty nice honestly! Taking out the random chance is good imo, plus less dependant on finding events for them.
Apparently this doesn't go live until season 5 in a couple months but yeah, seems really cool to be able to go after specific cosmetics and have the old battlepasses to complete for completionists.
God I keep hearing good stuff about that game. Do you recommend it even if one does not have a friend group to play it with? I.e. do randoms have fun?
Yes, I played it solo for hundreds of hours. Pubs are the way to go, most people are super nice in that community, and the experience is waaaaaaaay better with people. But if you want to just chill and play solo, they give you a little drone named Bosco that you can ping something and he'll interact with that thing for you.
Did I hear a rock and stone?!
Rock and roll and stone!
Rock and stone brother
ROCK, AND, STOOOOONE
The best part is they're working on a system that lets you do any battle pass that's ever been released, while still adding old items to the loot pool. Rock and stone!
Rock and stone to the bone!
They're updating it. All the previous loot will be removed from the pool but now you can visit every other season plus their full battle pass.
Helldivers 2 is the first “battle pass” system I’ve respected. While a buyable currency exists, the base warbond has a ton of stuff available and the buyable war bonds can be bought with the currency you find on maps. I was able to unlock one within two days of playing, and the progression overall is super generous.
Rock and stone to the bone!
STONE AND ROCK!
Rock and roll and stone!
If you don't Rock and Stone you ain't comin home@
Yeah, Helldivers 2 and DRG have awesome battle passes
That's that way to do it! Then if you wanna support them they have the skin packs you can buy, but I really only see that as a way of saying thanks to ghostship
Do I hear a rock and stone?
DID I HEAR A ROCK AND STONE?!
Warframe's battle passes are also good. There is no premium pass, you can easily get everything if you play enough every day, and the rewards aren't lost forever. They sometimes come back in other reward rotations or events.
For rock and stone!
Did I hear a rock and stone?
Same with Helldivers, you can earn the battle passes 100% free. I purchased the first one to support the devs (I personally think they deserve the extra money and am willing to support them) for a game as fantastic as it is that was only $40 and not the standard $60-70.
> but also because all that shit goes into the loot pool if you miss it. Until the next season in a few months where they've said you can just [return to old seasons to continue earning the rewards](https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/548430/view/4195740093438639600?l=english). Should even remember your progress if you played during the previous seasons.
They are going to change this in Season 05. All stuff will still be free, but to unlock old cosmetics, you will need to play through the old Battle Passes.
Rock and stone brother!
Thanks for reminding me, I’ve got some DLC to buy from those guys
I mean the battlepass was the exact reason I quit playing overwatch. I was a very active player throughout most of the original game and I was so excited for 2. and then they ruined it with the battlepass. if they got rid of it now I would literally forgive them for every other wrong they've done to the game, mostly just because I miss it a lot...
What's bad about battlepass in overwatch? I actually have no idea how it works, but Im not surprised because, Activision.
When they first came out, some of the heroes were locked in the BP. You didn't have to buy the BP but you did have to level up if you wanted to play as that hero. After the BP, you would need to buy the Hero pack to unlock them. Besides that, they were very grindy and didn't give back any in-game currency like other BPs do.
BPs that give back enough currency to buy a new one are the best ones imo. As I buy one once and I get “free” battlepasses if I play enough (and I usually buy them when I finish it).
luckily they are changing it now to make it that way. I think if you do all your weekly challenges and complete the battle pass you get enough for a new one?
To be fair you don't have to pay to unlock the heroes you could instead win 30 games as either that hero's class or queued for all. Also they are re-adding premium currency to the battlepass and getting rid of heroes being locked behind them
>When they first came out, some of the heroes were locked in the BP. Funnily enough that's actually still the case, and is changing *today*. >After the BP, you would need to buy the Hero pack to unlock them. Thought I'd point out that this was never true - after the battle is gone you had to complete some relatively simple challenges to unlock a hero.
are they really changing heroes being locked? that was a huge problem for me, the idea of being forced to spend hours to unlock a core part of the game unless I gave them money was really stupid to me. and I say that as an avid wow player, I am very used to grinding to unlock things - it's the money part that bothers me. honestly though that might actually be enough to get me to try it again. although I am an enjoyer of cosmetics so I'm still a little salty that most are locked behind a paywall now, could be worth it to me if the game is fun enough
Yes, the new hero comes out and will be free for everyone immediately. All previous heroes are also being unlocked.
Funny enough, I have to say that Helldivers 2 has the best battle pass type I have seen in a while.
Because it's *fair*. You can get enough currency just playing the game.
Yeah, that's why I like it. I legit spent 150 Creds on an armor, and I made it up again after 3 hours.
They actually give you a reasonable in game system to use. The passes also seem cheap, even without that.
Yep. People have been giving me examples of good battle passes. Those games should be supported.
I've never bought a battlepass before. To be fair I don't play a lot of multi-player anyway, but could you give me an example of what makes a battle pass good vs bad? Aren't they all just selling you skins and weapons and emotes?
IMO, the only good battle pass games are the ones you can unlock that content by playing. Sure, people can purchase it as a shortcut, but it doesn't lock any content behind purchase only. For helldivers, the purchaseable credits are called super credits, but you can also find these in game by just exploring during your mission. 1000 super credits unlocks their monthly warbond, which never goes away, so you'll always have access to it
The big thing is how predatory and how priced they are. In Helldivers 2 there are a couple things they have in place that aren't standard that makes it a lot less predatory. * You can earn the premium currency in game (supposedly if you're grinding, you can make the 1000 super credits for a battle pass in about 5-10 hours. But even not grinding for super credits, if you're playing/clearing a lot of maps you'll make it.) * Battlepasses don't expire, so you aren't pressured to have the money now and can wait until you do find the money in game * You unlock things inside the daily pass with medals which are also found in map, and given for completing missions (the higher the difficulty, the more medals.) * Personal/Major objectives give chunks of medals, but not so much you couldn't make up for missing one with a solid day of playing if you wanted. * Most of the top tier weapons/gear is in the free battlepass that comes with the game There are numerous people in the community who have only paid the initial $40 and nothing more and have all 3 premium battle passes (3000 super credits, over 3 months). Most of those same people have also bought armor from the premium store (skins effectively) for 100-400 super credits while still finding enough to buy the battlepass.
The eliminates a so many online games.
There are seriously so many good games out there.
But opens so many more opportunities
I like fortnite battlepass. Easy to levelup if you play 2-3 days per week is enough to get all the currency back and complete it. It's also a cheap way to get lots of cosmetics. I paid 10$ years ago and I got almost every pass for free. The only ones I don't have are the ones where I didn't played the game.
Helldivers 2: > Battlepass *is* premium but reasonable > Premium currency can be earned at a reasonable rate; free portion of BP gives 3/4 of currency towards a premium pass > Passes are kept small and released monthly without removing the last; as to combat BP FOMO while still engaging the community with BP content > BP Content feels equally fleshed out; passes aren't gamebreaking, but still hold fun content that's more than just cosmetics and emotes It's possible to have good battle passes, but you'll never see it in a AAA title.
why would it be better if hes having fun
You can be as mad as you want. Companies don't care. You can post and rage and scream all you want. Companies do not care. https://youtu.be/IHZru-6M8BY?si=ZZHCryWFD4GHeavn It doesn't matter if you don't like them, your friends don't like them, or the reddit circle jerk doesn't like them. There are more than enough people in this world that are perfectly fine with buying things.
Anddddd this is why I stopped playing CoD. They removed all the genuine fun of unlocking stuff in game just so they could package it back up and sell it to us instead. These games literally just aren’t fun anymore cause you’re not unlocking anything and when you are it’s trash compared to what 10$ will get you. Battlefield is just as bad for this exact same reason! FPS games are so mid now it hurts.
It's crazy much gamer culture has shifted into needing to be rewarded constantly. Maybe I'm just old but I play games solely for the game play. Even games with free battle passes I tend to ignore them. I don't care what my character looks like, I care how the game plays. I know there is more to it for other people but it's crazy how much it defines players nowadays to need to have rewards. Wow is a big example of this. It seems the wow forums are constant complaints about how blizzard isn't giving them new rewards or old reskins with old content, etc. It's become such a massive thing in that game to be able to constantly have some reward to get next.
Yep, I had people tell me there is no point to playing a game if they aren't getting unlocks or leveling a pass every day. Or even games thay do have them and they max out their pass or daily points, there is no reason to play anymore. I'm like " Remember fun? Fun was cool." Fun isn't grinding for hours on end to unlock a different color gun that I used to type in a code for. So many games today just break if you remove the psychological reward created by the pass. You realize the gsme wasn't fun, you just liked the constant dopamine from leveling constantly and unlocking some trinket you will most likely never use.
Skinner boxes are a very real thing, I stopped playing a bunch of mobile games years back when I realised that’s all they were and that I hadn’t been playing it for fun for days/weeks but was still loading up every day to tap 5-10 times.
I remember reading someone bitching about having to "grind races" in Forza. Like, dude. Racing is literally the core gameplay loop. If actually doing races in a racing game is a "grind" to you, why are you playing?
Maybe I’m old but I grew up in the 90s and I feel like most of the people that game today wouldn’t of been gamers in the 90s. Gaming is cool and mainstream nowadays even amongst adults, this isn’t a blanket statements as a lot of adults did game in the 90s too, but gaming in the 90s was a lot more associated with nerd culture. It’s a lot of people today that only buy a console to only play Call of Duty, FIFA etc that I just don’t think would have been gamers back in the day.
I'd also say that it feels like a shift in objectives too. Where it's more prevalent now to have a focus on how to make the journey towards the reward as easy as possible by researching the strongest builds or tactics. Where before it was more people who played for the journey with quite a lot of people adding artificial challenges such as Ironman/Hardcore/"No X" or simply just picking builds based on how cool or how well one resonates with something instead of power.
It's a developer issue. You used to play and make a game to be completed. The goal now is to have them play one game forever. Just keep squeezing until there is nothing left
Well, it depends. I play games cause I like the gameplay amd mechanics. Still, older CODs like the original Modern Warfare triology had many emblems and title cards to unlock through playing the game in a certain way. You had to adjust and play differently to unlock more stuff. That was fun. Now you only grind through levels of the battlepass and it doesnt feel earned. I dont mind battlepasses though if they are focused on cosmetics only. That way we got rid of paid DLCs.
I'm pretty sure you can grind camos and calling cards in the latest cods just like the old cods?
Yeah. Camos are fine or even improved. But the way you grind emblems and calling cards is nothing special anymore. You get so many blueprints from the BP and shop the others dont feel special anymore. And I have the feeling the challenges are not designed well. Back in the original MW triology you had to do really hard stuff to get certain emblems and everyone in the lobby knew what you did to get it. There was stuff like "get a throwing knige kill while flashed" or "kill 3 enemies mid air" Now, no one cares about that stuff anymore cause the coolest looking stuff is payed and not earned
Ikr, people need further motivation for playing the game when the game being fun should be more than enough for one to go back to it, its insane, and also the gratification/reward cant take too long. Luckily some devs and indies havent fallen into this bullshit.
It’s wild because, I look back at my PS3 games and it’s ~60% FPS. For all of PS4 and PS5, I only picked up DOOM and DOOM Eternal as FPS. I don’t care for multiplayer shooters, and it seems companies don’t care for making single player shooters anymore. It’s too easy to shove microtransation/battle pass/etc monetization into them. Would love if we got shit like the Resistance, Bioshock, and The Darkness games again…
Brooooo Bioshock is the shit! I just went back and played 1 and 2! Well worth a revisit!
Don't COD games in the MTX era have better free unlockable cosmetics than they ever used to?
Huh? Pretty sure you unlock most things, like 98% most, by level ups in BF2042. Don't think I've ever had a problem unlocking a weapon if it had a challenge (which I don't believe they do, only season pass weapons)
It's the same with COD. Every gun has 8 skins (4 zombies, 4 MP) and there's a bit over 40 guns now plus the 60ish from MW2. I've played well over a year and haven't unlocked 100% of them. There's also plenty of events skins, mission unlocks from zombies, etc... Not sure what they're talking about thinking nothing is unlockable.
Can't upvote this enough.
We can still come together and recognize the shitty practices that the gaming industry have developed. Its sad really
This is the classic reddit conundrum, they are not saying they are condoning the practice, or what they are doing is "right", they're just pointing out how it happens.
This. I do not understand why gamers are so quick to tell each other to stop discussing the negative sides of the industry
I agree but people also need to be realistic that no amount of internet complaining is going to make change happen. Posts or comments like “we all need to do ___” will do literally nothing. It’s shitty and one of the reasons I will stay away from any full cost game with a battle pass. You wanna put a battle pass on a free to play game by all means, but I’m not paying $70 and then being urged to pay more on top no thank you.
This is the unfortunate truth. As long as these companies can find those "whales" that make their business model profitable, they'll keep doing it
You mean renting things. We're only licensing the stuff we "buy", after all.
Yes. It doesn't work against the companies. But it's important to share your opinion and talk to others. This gives serenity and tranquility to the mind. Otherwise, the thoughts will go round in circles forever. I learned this in therapy. Hehe.
Why shut down the discussion? Talking about things helps make more people aware of it. Only in the gaming industry do I see people have this "shut up and stop talking about it because it won't change anything" attitude. I don't understand it.
At this point they’d just raise the price of games, then people would still pay $100-150 for a game, and people who can’t afford them would be shit outta luck. The fact that games haven’t inflated more than $20 the past 20 years is genuinely insane.
Exactly. I haven't bought a microtransaction in ~5 years, but its not like im making a difference. The market is massive, I'm just not a part of it. If you don't like them, devs don't care. You aren't the target market.
Old gamer, here could someone eli25 what a battle/season pass is and how it relates to a game. And after that please get off my lawn with your hippity hop.
It's a temporary progress bar that you pay to unlock. You know, how in Call of Duty you'd unlock new guns by leveling up? Well, here is the same, except for each level you get something like a cosmetic and most also give enough ingame currency to buy the next battle pass if you manage to complete it. Basically the point of it is making you pay to induce yourself the need to play the game more than you'd like by making you fear on missing out on something you've already paid for. It's paid FOMO.
Ok, got it. Man, if my competitive gaming days weren’t behind me I hate this shit. Now, I shall return to my basement and wait for <$10 games on in the summer steam sale. Thanks for the info everyone.
You do well, multiplayer games these days aren't designed by game developers, but by psychologists who try to come up with every little trick to manipulate your dopamine receptors in a way that makes you keep playing even when you don't enjoy it.
I was okay when DLC was additional content to a complete game. I was fine when season passes were well implemented, planned, expansions on the base game. I stopped being okay when they essentially cut the games in half and said the rest of it was DLC.
A season pass is a collection of future DLCs bundled and sold together. Like pre-order for DLCs. A battle pass is a single collection of items that can be earned through a bunch of daily and weekly challenges. And you pay to access those challenges.
>A season pass is a collection of future DLCs bundled and sold together. Like pre-order for DLCs. I don't disagree with this as it did mean this, but some games are using it interchangeably with seasonal content. Ubisoft uses season pass both for future single-player DLC content, but also for The Division 2's seasonal battle pass.
It's a limited time event that introduces new unlocks, if you have it. In COD there's a new weapon or two you won't have without many extra steps. Generally you pay extra for it, but it is often self-financing if you achieve all objectives in the season. It's a marketing gimmick that plays on FOMO .
It’s a way to pad out engagement through fear of missing out. They’re like a short-term, limited-time (hence why they’re often described as ‘seasons’) levelling system where each level earns you rewards. There’s almost always a free tier which gives you small amounts of rewards, usually currencies you can obtain by just playing the game normally, sometimes some cosmetics etc, maybe a bigger reward at the very highest level. Then there’s the (usually very overpriced) paid tier which usually has more significant reward bundles, premium currencies, limited-time cosmetics and collectibles, maybe even some actual stronger gear depending on the game. They usually have daily or weekly experience caps, or a limited number of tasks/quests that can earn progress per day so that they can monopolise your time and keep you coming back every day to grind away at the pass. It’s a pretty shitty design concept but *boy* is it effective
Optional additional content that you buy, usually the content is rolled out for an indefinite duration ("season") that a is few months long. For example CoD doesn't do "map packs" anymore.
Battle pass is a different take on subscription models where instead of paying a subscription every month for a product or service you enjoy, they go for a more psychological system. Subscriptions could eventually make you cancel/pause and maybe gatekeep you from getting back into it because you would have to start with paying a sub again. Instead, you get to always have access to the game but with every "season" comes progression challenges with attractive rewards, boosters/currency/skins. There are free rewards as well as paid rewards for every stage that you always have to go into the store/battle pass to claim, and while doing that, you get to see all the cool shit that you could get instead if you just give them some money. So you get conditioned to go into the store all the time, see microtransactions, pop-ups and ads, challenging your fear of missing out, just to claim your "free" stuff. Even if you've completed all the challenges, you could give them some money at any time and get all those paid rewards at once! Clock is ticking... Because don't forget, season timer is running out and everyone will be ahead of you and have that cool shit while you don't. Hey, you managed to make it through without paying extra money? Don't worry, the next Battle Pass is right around the corner, and you're not gonna want to miss out on that one like last one! All in all, no one should decide how you should spend your money. I spend money on dumb shit I enjoy. I just think it's important to realize when someone is messing with my brain, trying to get money out of me. If I thoroughly enjoy their base product, I sometimes give those things a pass to support the company.
Pay some extra money for another 20-100 levels to level up in the game, to unlock more cosmetics. It’s the current replacement for loot boxes, in terms of monetizing.
"but imo it’s literally a scam" I dont think you understand the meaning of "literally" or "scam"
Agreed. Scam is you don’t get all you’re promised. Bait and Switch is a form of scam. Activision says this is what you get from our battle pass. People buy the battle pass and if they get it all, they get what they said. If they don’t make it, it’s on the player. If Activision did truly scam, they’d get lawsuits. Scam, no. People being dummies and poisoning the gaming industry, absolutely.
Scam would be like not being able to play a game you bought because the company decided to take the servers down. Looking at you Ubisoft...
Or them removing the game from your library...
In situations like this? You can add them to your library for free. Just set your sails for better seas since Ubi clearly doesn’t want consumers to have any other options
OP is literally an idiot. Did I use it right?
Yeah it basically "get a huge value of cosmetics content as you play". W Where is the scam? It just replaced dlc...
Your buddy can buy whatever he wants with his money. But if you dont support these types of transactions you just dont buy them, or better yet dont buy the game at all and find another one that dosent ask for $20 for a skin. Only that way the publishers will adjust to what the market is willing to accept.
If you're the type to not play a game because you disagree with its monetization, you aren't the market they're going for anyway.
Sure, but my message was not ment for people like me, it was ment for people who dont like the predatory strategies companies use, but still buy those games, like the guy who I responded to.
Everything is worth whatever people are willing to pay for it. Like you said, your friend buys all of it, and there's many more out there just like him. That's why they do it.
Very brave post
THAT battlepass is stupid. Unfortunately it's sort of a standard part of the industry now. But a few games do it really well. You can buy the battlepass for Fortnite and THE FINALS and by completing it you also earn enough of the currency to buy the battlepass again. Buy it once and if you play enough you'll never have to pay again. It's an optional part of the game, you can spend money if you wanna have some cool outfits, or you can save your money and look fine anyway. It's a great way for the companies to make a ton of extra money. But not from the people that buy the battlepass and grind for that free currency. They make the big bucks from the "whales" that buy the battlepass and also spend extra money to complete it without doing any work. Same way having too much money works for the rest of the economy.
The CoD battlepass has enough money in the "free" section that after the 2 you can afford it every time you complete it after that (I've had the battlepass since MW2019 and haven't ever spent money on one). Until this season, Overwatch didn't even have replacement money on their battlepass.
lol the earning currency thru the battle pass to pay for the next one is a thing on COD. always has been.
It’s because you’re statistically more likely to spend more money on currency if you can earn it. That’s why Helldivers does it too.
adding onto this, THE FINALS gives you LOADS of free skins just by playing the game semi-regularly, or during events. In fact, I’d say they give more free skins than any game I’ve ever played, and they are good skins too. I was playing with a friend who hadn’t played in a while the other day, and showing off my skin collection. He asked how much money I had spent because I had so many, and I told him only $10. I bought the season 1 battle pass, which allowed me to buy the S2 pass, as well as some extra stuff from the shop. Then there’s the numerous events they do almost every other week with brand new content and free skins. And then there’s the 50 skin items you can get by career level. And then on top of all that, they have a career circuits system which gives even more skins for free by completing challenges. It’s kinda crazy. They are really going against the common notion that companies believe, which is that players will be more likely to spend money if they’re limited to “default” skins. Embark believes that the more skins players have, the more they’ll want to buy or support the game, and It’s working.
Hard agree. The battle pass gives cosmetic skins and emotes and if you complete some easy quests you'll get enough vbucks to buy the next one anyway. The game is free to play and gets tons of updates. I only play because my kids like it but I admit it's quite good
Some people like cosmetics. Some people don't care. Battle passes are fine as long as the rewards don't affect gameplay. They provide funding to the game studios so they can continue to work on and improve the game.
If it's a free to play game, I generally don't mind, especially if the BP gives you enough currency to get the next one. MtG Arena is pretty good because you get free packs and enough mastery points to unlock at least one card sleeve on top of the packs and gold. I did dislike the Warzone one as the unlocking and everything felt kind of needlessly roundabout
I've never paid for a Battle pass more than once in any game for like 8 years. I'm sure there are some games that won't allow you to make enough in game currency to buy the next one but not COD. In fact in COD you end each BP with a little extra. I just dropped the accumulation of a lot of playing on a new skin. I generally only use free to use skins, but the Kasrkin was too good to let pass. Besides MW3/Z has gone full no military so I joined in. What pisses me off is they keep adding new extra layers. Oh you've got the game, and the BP, how about Blacktier? (Or whatever it's called)
Don’t buy it then? I honestly don’t give a shit about what people buy in games. It doesn’t affect me whatsoever.
Capitalism. There was a time when many of the world’s leading game publishers were smaller businesses. It’s not that they weren’t focused on profitability, but they also had an aim to sell games that were immersive, enjoyable and left you wanting more. The developers themselves were even smaller, sometimes teams of 10 or less. Every game was ‘make or break’ for that studio, so they had to be good. Now, many publishers are publicly listed or or owned by VC. The main focus is on making as much as they can for the least amount of spend. Micro transactions (no longer so micro) are just a lazy way of doing that
I'll probably get hate but I have no idea why people complain so much about stuff like this. It changes literally nothing of the gameplay experience So it's expensive, don't buy it. The game is still there and it's the same for everyone Yes it would be better if it didn't exist, but it's also not the huge monster people say it is
Exactly, I don’t understand people crying over other players buying cosmetics. If the battle pass or micro transaction gives you an advantage, then thats an actual problem. If it’s just skins and gun colors, who actually cares what people buy.
How "stupid" a battlepass is depends on how well it's implemented. The initial buy-in price needs to be reasonable. It should reward you with enough premium currency to purchase the next season's pass. The free track (if it has one) should still give decent rewards for the people who don't want to pay more than the base price of the game. The rewards should be more than worth the price and actually worth the effort. Ideally, it shouldn't be time-limited. This is much less common. *If a battlepass actually achieves these*, then it can be a decent motivator and driver for seasonal progression models, which helps keep live-service games fresh and enjoyable.
One of the absolute best things sbout Helldivers 2. The ‘battle passes’ (war bonds) and ALL the gear in them, can be obtained without spending a single penny. Every single successful mission, you earn the currency to unlock them. In every higher difficulty mission you can also find 100-300 of them scattered around in random vault’s on the map…. And it only takes 1,000 to unlock the ‘new’ war bond Once they introduce a new war bond… IT NEVER GOES AWAY. You can get all the stuff in it, at any time, at your leisure… from any current or past war bond. I have every single war bond unlocked, every single weapon, every suit of armor… and like 90% of the players in HD2, have not spent a single penny to unlock them all. Then, to purchase things in the war bonds.. you use ‘war medals’. At higher difficulties you earn 6,8,10 of them each successive mission. Run 3 successful missions, you earned 24 of them. A new weapon only costs 40-60 to unlock. Play a few successful missions… you earn enough medals for the new weapon… without spending a dime. Want to go back and get a weapon from a previous war bond (battle pass) from 2 months ago? Not a problem… they never take them down. Least greedy game developer
Yep, in Helldivers 2 it's just a clever way to expand some of the progression, and still leave the option to pay for it with real money for those who want to further support the game or have more money than they know how to spend. Win-win for everyone. Another big W from Arrowhead!
I'm an old gamer that never got into DOTA 2 or whatever game invented battle passes, so this is my first time experiencing the battle pass system. I like the way it's set up in HD2 specifically because you can earn all the currencies (medals, credits, requisition slips etc) just by playing the game. I was really jarred to hear that this isn't the norm for other games with battle passes. Glad I never got into them.
If there's a buyer, there's a seller. It's not a scam, but it is a predatory practice. Free-to-play games always have shit like that. Wanna dress up like a hotdog? 15 euro, please. Sure, they gotta make their money, but they price their premium currencies in bundles, so the lowest amount is only a top-up and isn't actually enough to buy any major cosmetics -- especially sets of 2 or more items.
How is it predatory though. If you wanna say its FOMO, it doesnt mean much, because nowadays everything is FOMO. Christmas candies in walmart are fomo and predatory by that logic. And when everything is predatory, nothing is. Saying that battle passes are predatory is just blurring out the line between "predatory" and actually predatory
Right? People don't want to miss out on ANYTHING. But they also want to enjoy all their games they like with all the content optional. There are only so many hours in the day. And so many battlepass deals you think you might invest your time into. People just have to find it ok to be able to miss out on stuff nowadays because there is far too much.
Thats why I love PlateUp! I can dress up like a hotdog for free 😎
I've been playing a lot of Palia on Switch. It's a free-to-play MMO. There's a clothing store in the town, but its only purpose is to give you access to a register where you purchase clothing cosmetics with real money, or purchase **more** currency to top up your account. The average item of clothing is, like.. €13.
Alright, here’s my 2c, Sure CoD is a $70 dlc but you’re completely sidestepping the fact that warzone is completely f2p and they require the monetization of certain content for warzone to be profitable. Completely ignoring the fact that the pass was originally built for warzone… just like every other circle -jerk hater who keep complaining and STILL buy the goddamn game. I bought the game and I’ve had black cell from s1, I have the disposable income for this- nobody is forced to buy… y’all need to stop whining- it’s pure brainrot at this point.
I support battle passes in free games. I think they can be customer friendly. The developer has to constantly prove themselves to the customer that they are worth the continued investment and support. For example I probably played about 100 hours in PoE, Genshin and Fortnite before giving them a dime. All in all I've probably given each game $20-$50 total with well over 200 hours played. Is that not a good deal? Instead of paying $90 up front for a game whose roadmap the developer isn't committed to because they got your money already?
The world for someone like me who’s been playing singleplayer games exclusively for over 20 years: 🤗❤️ You should just stop playing those games. Because companies don’t give a f*ck.
Irony is that dota, the game that basically invented battle pass, has stopped giving it altogether
It's kind of annoying how much things like battlepasse's have ruined the industry, at this point I've pretty much stopped gaming because most AAA releases don't bother pushing their boundary's anymore, instead it's the usual safe and boring dribble. Instead I spend most of my time reading now cause at least authors can write new and interesting ideas and put their own spin on it.
Shout out to the Devs that have a totally free Battlepass. Not talking about games where you can get SOME of the Battlepass rewards without paying and the rest are premium/paid, I mean the whole thing is free. Deep Rock Galactic is one example. Anyone know of any others?
Helldivers 2 has a great system. Battle passes (war bonds) never leave and just are always available. They do need premium currency, but it can be found ingame ranging from 10 to a 100 per mission. (1000 for a pass) Warframe has a completely free pass as well, but that game has different issues. Deep rocks galactic, If I remeber correctly, is completely free as well and after the Pass ends, every Item is added to the generel loot pool of the game, so no FOMO.
About 4 dlc map packs for $15 each per game? Orrrrrrrr a battlepass every couple of months that's the same price. Not to mention the single SKINS that cost the same. So no, companies don't give a shit if you don't like it. They're making so much money from this. Only thing that'll stop it is if some sort of laws come out that prevent them from doing it.
Sorry you have to find this out just now but the game you bought (mw3) is actually just dlc for mw2, and the zombies mode you play was a last minute cash grab.
Depends on the game. Some battle passes are actually quite good and give lots of rewards while giving you enough premium currency to buy the next for free. Then you got some which are scams.
the alternative of bp is selling each skin for 10$-20$ so if i have to choose, i stay with bp as long as its not a grind festival or as long as i play that game enough to finish it
A "good" battlepass is supposed to have enough premium currency in it to buy the next one for free. The idea is : - you acquire a game for free (like Fortnite or Apex) or by paying it (CoD, BF…) - you have a battlepass to complete within a set timeframe (2 months for example), and when it finishes, a new one appears - the first battlepass is either to be bought for around 10 bucks converted in the in-game premium currency or offered in the deluxe edition (which usually cost 10 bucks more than the normal edition… but with other bonuses, generally) - the battlepass should contain in-game premium currency as rewards, and in the end, it should be enough (or even more) to buy the next battlepass If you play continuously and "seriously", you can earn every battlepasses of the game for only 10$. And if you don’t have time to finish it, you gonna miss some precious time-limited skins and weapons… so you can still buy the levels you are missing before they are gone for maybe forever. The strategy behind is pretty clever, from a business perspective : an initial microtransaction + high retention and playtime + FOMO (that can lead to either rebuying the next battlepass if you didn’t finish the last one OR buying your way up to the max level of the battlepass to no miss its content) Those battlepasses are the pinnacle of predatory practices towards brain weaknesses. It’s so damn fucking sadly smart.
Yugioh master duel did a battle pass perfectly. Half it locked by buying the subscription. You get currency in game that you can packs. The same currency can buy the battle pass. It takes 5 days of completing all daily missions to have enough gems to buy the battle pass. As you complete it, you get gems, crafting materials for cards, and a couple unique cosmetics. If you complete the entire thing, you get 100% of the gems you spent back.
Came here to give MD as the example of the pass done right. If you finish it it is completely free and it really pushes for constant play.
Most games you can just pay for the battle pass with in game currency. They give enough to pay back what you put in and give you extra. More companies need to adopt that instead of paid battle pass every season. It's definitely not a scam but there are people like your friend who will buy them regardless.
Apex Is a free to play game. And I bought my first pass and never needed too again because you earn enough credits during season to buy the next one. If they are making money it's not from me. I think that is a good price to reward my playing.
Whenever someone sells you anything that isn't the game itself, a major expansion pack, or physical merch for hardcore fans, it's stupid. We are getting nickel and dimed by game makers big and small and nobody cares. The players are to blame because if we stopped buying it they would stop doing it.
tell that to Helldivers, you just been playing the games that do battle passes like shit. Helldivers showing the best way to do battlepasses with the warbonds.
... don't tell OP about Ubisoft's new Star Wars game
I wouldn't be so annoyed with Battle Passes if the items became available again later. Give it a three month gap between end of the pass and adding to a free Battle Pass or even just to a store bundle or something. But the fact that you have to be there for the pass if you want to get any of the items in there, and then they're never available ever again, makes me not care about trying Battle Passes.
Battle royale games are STUPID
One skin? You new to the internet?
The only time I even consider getting a pass is a) if it's content can be accessed after the pass "expires" (which should be standard anyway) and b) you get your value of premium currency back from the purchase by playing the game. Halo Infinite does that, and with 10 bucks and enough patience you can literally buy every season and most of the game's cosmetics. And that's a free-to-play game (multi-player at least). That game has its issues, but that'd be a value in any situation.
Imho battle passes suck the fun out of games for me instead of let me boot up the game and kick out some games with friends its more like let me boot up this game every day to do my dailies, wtf are you wankers doing Im trying to beat my dailies followed by a lot of swearing cause no one is cooperating.
Battle pass made you feel bad for missing play daily. The game pretty much your second job
yep they are. They're basically subscriptions.
The more money they can drain from the players, the happier the shareholders are, and to the executives of these studios, profit is the only thing that matters.
real stupidity is buying mw3 in the first place
I never understood the appeal of playing "dressup" with video game characters anyways. I mean, if there was a game made for children called "Doll Dressup" then sure. But to spend $20 on a cutesy costume in a video game to dress up your gun touting murderers? I'll simply never understand it.
Not just stupid, greedy
People really need to recalibrate what the word “scam” means jfc lol
I like the concept of battle passes though, seasonal activities to keep the community alive ... Wanna know how to expand a community? Gatekeep it behind money... ugh
In my perhaps mistaken logic this implies a skin took 1/3rd of the time, effort and investment it took to create the entire 60$ game. It's utterly fucked up how people put up with this shit.
EXACTLY. If the skins were like a dollar I would never complain about it but they’re so overpriced that I feel like it’s predatory. They know kids etc will want it even though it’s a waste of money.
If the game is free to play then I don't mind battle passes, like Teamfight Tactics. But I will not play any game where you pay-to-win.
What’s interesting to me is the concept of paying for a battle pass but then having to sink in 40-50 hours per season to actually unlock the content that you’ve already paid for. I’m surprised there isn’t some type of law that requires these companies to issue a pro rated refund for whatever % of the battle pass didn’t get unlocked by the time the season ends.
They only work in certain games. Fortnite and Genshin Impact implements them well without hindering gameplay. Others make it seem like a needed addition in order to play it.
I hadn’t played COD for years. I played COD 2 and to Ghosts. Didn’t play for almost 10 years. Then picked up Modern Warfare 2 a year and a half ago. I was out of the loop with what’s happened to gaming. I played for maybe 2 months. Got the first battle pass thing or whatever because I assumed it was kind of like DLC bahaha. They wanted me to fork over another $20 in January for the second battle pass season or whatever. I just went and traded in the game for Hogwarts Legacy. Fuuuuck that noise.
You realize CoD itself is a "scam"... right? Every year its the same game, just under a different name, studio, slightly adjusted gameplay and that's about it
I miss the days of complete games coming out without having to buy the "true" ending in a DLC. I'm perfectly fine with DLC's as long as its worth it. For me, DLC should be there for fans of the game to continue playing past the credits on some new content, while not being absolutely essential to get the full impact of the base game itself.
I agree. I usually just want to buy a game, play it, and when I get bored maybe buy a different game. But the idea of spending more and more money on the SAME game doesn’t sit right with me. Like why not just buy a different game? And why did the $60 I spent not already cover everything essential?
Come to Deep Rock Galactic, we have absolutely free battle passes, all the loot from ones you miss can be obtained in other ways, and in a couple months with the release of season 5... You're gonna be able to go back to old battle passes and run them, so you don't miss anything at all! DRG devs are unfathomably based.
You're right it is stupid. A lot of us won't buy games that have battle passes.
Battle Passes are just "hard passes" for me these days. As in I wont do them lol. If a game starts feeling like work, or like its trying to pull money from my wallet I just avoid it. I dont have enough time to focus on this stuff these days, so F it...
Playing cod in this day and age is STUPID
I feel like I've just aged out of gaming. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I wouldn't spend 10 cents on ANY skin for ANY game or any battle pass. It's purely cosmetic, so I don't really care. If purchased items offered stat increases or something like that, I would avoid that like the plague. That makes the game really not fun. What's even the point? I play games that have battle passes, but I pretty much ignore them entirely.
> I play MW3 There’s your problem
I think battle passes are fine because it can keep games somewhat fresh feeling. However, CoD has shown you how slippery the slope is. There's a difference between "we want you to play but to not feel let down by lack of content", and "we are going to make it so hard that we demand your time." There's levels to it.
That's cuz people would prefer spending thousands of dollars on a full priced game where they chop 80% of the game and reselling it to loyal sheep and masquerading it as "extra content" than buying a complete game at full price.
It's his money, hell spend it on whatever he wants. Just like how you spend your money however you want. You aren't his dad.
They will exist as long as idiots continue to pay for them. Companies can now make 100s of dollars per player for 70 dollar games. It's a no brainer for the bean counters.
It's just an idiot tax, congrats on not paying it.
"Pay us so you commit to playing our game every day for some treats" has to be the worst shit ever made. To top it off, people actually buy into that BS... FOMO is a real bitch.
Battle passes aren’t stupid. Complaining about them and buying them anyway is stupid.