Dev Tracker - Discussion

It's not a good comparison since heroin is several times more addictive than f2p video games lol.

Whales percentage is only like 2% and many of them are actually rich or streamers use it as a tool to generate traffic/income. Very, very few people actually ruin their lives paying more than they can afford in most video games, at least from what I've seen.


(Edit: and if somebody really ruin their lives playing a f2p video game, I would say it's the social support that needs the improvement because they'll gamble somewhere else without f2p anyways.)

You guys are acting as if anybody touches f2p games they'll be instantly corrupted and lives ruined. I need more data to believe in that.

F them
They may not be responsible for the creation of the freemium/pay2win/throw everything into DLC problem, but they are responsible for these predatory practices to continue existing and these practices actually affect the entirety of the other 98%.

Gear in this game is kinda ridiculous. You have multiple sets of JSE. You have low and non-ilvl items still being ideal in key situations. You have pet jobs essentially requiring 2 jobs worth of gear (master/pet sets). You also end up having more dupes if you play multiple pet jobs because of how wyvern/automaton/avatar function vs 'pet' gear.


All jobs are seemingly randomly assigned to gear instead of having access to all armor of a specific type ie. cloth, leather, mail or plate. This leads to situations where you carry duplicates of gear because there is no overlap. Then there's the niche gear. Then there's the experimental gear. Then there's the lockstyle that keeps you from looking like a clown in a strobe light :D

DONT LOOK UP!

(Yeah, the meteor is going to kill a lot of people, but think of how much money we'll make and the jobs mining it!)

"Next he's going to be like, don't give Heroin to kids. Way to take the high ground Obi-won" - probably someone on these forums.

I mean ... he's not wrong.

Most "Free to Play, Pay to Win / Progress" games have a very abusive model that is just a skinners box. They are preying on people's addiction to the dopamine hit whenever a digital "reward" is handed to them. Once folks figured out they could monetize winning a challenge by punishing those who don't pay, well it was game over.

aka: "oops, we f-ed up our original schedule"

Just wanted to jump-in rq and say the last few pages have been outstanding. A REALLY good discussion! I totally agree(d) with P2W being pathetic and awful, but I laid in bed last night thinking about it(yes my life is that boring), and isn't paying a monthly subscription the same thing as buying a weapon you could have grinded for months for?

I know you gotta draw the line, but doesn't money EXIST to not have to "work"? Like, who gets hungry and goes out and kills a cow? That's exactly what money is for.

I did NOT expect to be thinking like this, but like I said the last few pages have been really intriguing on a personal note.

AND, Savael, can't believe I'm gonna say this, but great posts!

EDIT: I *might* be considering playing Neverwinter to explore the Menzoberranzan, which I think is why I'm trying to justify P2W... "trying".

I'm very torn on this specific topic.
On one hand I'm totally against pay 2 win.
On the other hand... you still gonna get that, at least to some degree.
FFXI has been pretty much p2w (for people who wanted to go that route) through the plentifum merc groups selling pretty much... almost anything?

At that point what's the difference between a group of RMTs selling stuff, a group of legit players selling stuff, or the Company itself selling stuff?

Psychologically there's a clear difference, I agree.
But practically?

The difference is that one is something you play the game to earn, the other is something you work your job to earn.

The problem is that if you don't have the time to play or aren't having fun playing a game, but still feel inclined to drop 4-6 hours' worth of your salary just to skip it, why are you even playing it? You're paying money for a game (or not) and then paying additional money so you have less of it to play?

Grind shouldn't be something you want to skip. A game with satisfying grind can make it feel like an adventure, and part of the journey. It's like buying someone else's FFXI account that already has all of the story missions completed and full RMEA. You'd log in and be powerful as hell, but you'd be a few hundred dollars poorer and have nothing to do. You'd log in, play with your toys for a few minutes, get bored because there's no progress to be made, and then never touch it again.

And it's a little bit different in a PvP scenario, but then the opposite is true. I guess if you get your kicks from stomping on 10-year-olds, sure. But not only is that (debatably) not fun either, it's especially not fun to the F2P players.

What makes it "satisfying" though?

EDIT: Not trying to be vague, but what I mean is, the grind has to have some kind of reward to be grinding to. Levels, gear, gil, something. Isn't the reward the satisfying part?

Well that's the thing. It's not really the grind that makes it fun and an adventure, it's the things you do around it and the people you do it with. Which is where alot of the nostalgia seeking rose tinted glasses look at private servers comes from, trying to recreate that feeling of adventure with other people.

Everyone has stories and remembers that cool party or finding a nice camp or doing something bit differently and having it work out. It's still a grind, but you remember and look fondly on the things surrounding that grind.

FFXI isn't anywhere near p2w outside of one concept that can be stretched to fit a very loose definition of p2w:

1. loners or people who work extremely weird hours for their region who multibox to accomplish content vs grouping up. The game doesn't require the purchase of additional chars the advance like a true p2w system would, but it is a way to "throw cash at the problem" for players stuck without others to run with. Note the very specific multiboxer I talk about- they're still after content not payin'rent.

No one pays a subscription just for that Caladbolg- you pay for the game itself and then are free to do with the time available to you as you wish. If you choose breed chocobos and race for an entire month, and you had fun doing it, then that was a sub fee well-spent. If you spent the entire month hating Bugbear Strongman, but at least you got your Caladbolg, then maybe it was worth that sub fee, maybe it wasn't.

in-game RMT by anyone that isn't directly SE sponsored and integrated into the game is by definition not p2w, even though the results are the same. You might be "paying to win", but the System isn't a "pay to win system".

@Jessikah hit it on the head- the p2w crowd is largely motivated by peer pressure and insecurity vs a desire to be good at the game. They just want to skip steps along the way to stand in town with that newest Shiny that got instead of lunch at work for a week to be "LOOK AT MEEEEE!!!!!". Because if you're purposely putting work hours' value into your "game", aren't you just working more to look pretty vs working less and playing the game more.....because you enjoy the actual game? Stop worrying about being first to the top of the jungle gym at your elementary school playground every day....step back and enjoy the daisies growing at the edge of the park that everyone ignores.


EDIT: and @Negan- yes its the reward at the end of the grind that makes that grind worth it...but its also that grind that makes the reward at the end valuable. Take away the time spent, and its no different than buying a Vile Elixir from the Curio Moogle.

Player agency. Giving the player some reason to want to interact with the game outside of mashing Attack over and over again. This can be achieved by making even the most mundane fights challenging, and/or having mechanics that foster strategic choices.

For some examples: Giving players non-regenerating HP and MP can force them to use their defensive moves. Giving enemies more HP to encourage the use of buffs and debuffs. Giving exponentially more EXP to vanquishing harder foes can naturally guide players to want to find the toughest enemies they can fight without excessive risk of loss. That in combination with a severe penalty such as EXP loss on defeat can really make even the most mundane fights thrilling.

Excellent replies. TY!

EDIT: Still looking at Neverwinter tho.. :kms:

The sad thing is, player agency is closely inversely proportional to accessibility and "quality-of-life". The more you force a player to do, the slower and more punishing the game feels.

Free-to-play games understand this, and tend to make the barrier for entry very low. The games start easy and give you a lot of dopamine off the bat with congratulations and flashing lights and tons of rewards. The game itself isn't necessarily fun, but your brain thinks you're having fun. So then, as they slowly withhold those rewards, you want more. You'll pay a buck or two to get those rewards, but that only skips the withholding even further, so you need to pay more to get those same rewards.

Most of those games aren't designed to be fun in the slightest. Heck, most of them barely qualify as games. There's an entire subgenre of RPG on the mobile market called "AFK" or "Idle", where the player holds absolutely no agency. And they're massively popular.

The problem isn't that they exist, but that the wallets of gamers are encouraging them over games that are actually games. Fewer and further between are games with solid gameplay loops, free-to-play or not.

I fully agree with your statement I just couldn't let this opportunity pass^^ Trust me on this (and most NA players on Leviathan can vouch for this comment, not to mention a good chunk of Bahamut), the last thing my brain thinks when a game has tons of flashing lights is I'm having fun^^ :P

I feel I should also state that there's nothing inherently wrong with accessibility. Not every game needs to be mind-boggling or impossibly challenging to be good. Games can have good features outside of gameplay. You just hope, as someone who's dropping money for that game, that there's some level of interaction in the experience. Otherwise, why not just watch a movie?

Final Fantasy XI as an example has a lot of areas that could use some quality-of-life adjustments, as the extra player agency doesn't necessarily add to the experience.

I watched an interview recently with a game developer from the very early days of the medium. She mentioned how there was a huge internal debate among her peers of whether those text-based adventure games (you know the ones where you type "go north") should start to include graphics. We look back at graphics as a no-brainer, but at the time it could be argued that it was removing player agency. Just like a book, the player's imagination could draw the game world however they wanted, often with far better fidelity than pixel art could have at the time. Drawing a map on paper was part of the experience. For the significant extra cost of needing to hire artists and engineers to add graphics to an adventure game, would that have been worth it? Players were already accustomed to the way things were.

Yet graphics add accessibility. Many people are born with aphantasia, which inhibits (to varying degrees) their ability to conjure mental images. Not to mention reducing frustration from something like not being able to guess what the next step in the adventure is. The key is, if you're going to take away player agency, you should add it in other ways. Use the new features to the advantage of the game, rather than taking control away from players.

If merc culture or RMT is your benchmark for p2w then nearly every multiplayer or online game qualifies. It's everywhere, from PL for gold in WoW Classic to boosting in New World or Destiny 2; Hell, you can even RMT bells for friggin' Animal Crossing if you're inclined to do so.

Everything is p2w. If money can be spent to give an advantage. (which is literally everything in existence)

Time is money, and money buys you time (better spent time). Money is the only and the every. The alpha and omega.

And that's not a point of view, that's reality. Pretending it isn't is naive.

It's funny. Final Fantasy XI has a lot of elements of free-to-play, pay-to-win games with its graudally slowing leveling and item-centric late-game.

If FFXI was made just a few years later with MTX in mind, just imagine the things they could have charged for. $0.49 per charge to recharge your EXP bands, $3.99 for a stack of Skill-Up cookies, consumables that add temporary Treasure Hunter, paid skips to get through each expansion so you could attend the late-game. Every job made purchasable as DLC, rather than quested at level 30...

Yet other elements of the game makes it less needy. Its leveling process such as how it's broken up by the Limit Break quests and made easier by taking breaks to do missions for Rhapsody Key Items with its layered progression system including stuff like Fame, Rank, and Combat Skill-Ups, not to mention the unusually horizontal progress of the late-game.

Mercs isnt P2W. It may have certain elements, but its not P2W.

P2W is pay and immediately get loot by the company who made the game. Merc's dont make the loot drop at some higher rate. They're the bridge between someone who doesnt have a group of friends to partake in the content.

Oh man, can you imagine... instead of the wheel of monthly campaigns they were just paid for. "Greeting adventurers! Remember those choose your own adventure books that were cool in the 90's for like 3 weeks along with snap bracelets and hypercolour shirts?? Well, we're bringing in a choose your own adventure campaign! Omen Cards $2 a month. Double Exp/CP $3 a month. Micro/Macro Orb dealy $1 a month. Any trust you want is 25 cents! Cornelia is $25 though. Read on for the list of campaigns and their pricing today!"

And it'd pop up on your screen every time it was relevant.

"We see you just earned 11,000 limit points from that enemy. It could have been 22,000 if you had the Experience Campaign equipped!"

"It looks like you're shy 7% Magic Haste towards the cap. Legendary 5-star Trust Cornelia would solve that. Unlock her permanently at the Mythril Store! Only $1.99 per summon, or $19.99 $16.99 for a 10-pull!"

"You're on your last Home Point Warp. Restock now, click HERE!"

This all depends on your frame of reference. If you choose to join the rat race, then yes, Time = Money. But a lot of us have moved to Money=Time, because a minority has realized which is actually finite and which isn't.

The only part that changes is the ratio. (x)Time is always (y)Money.
It's the same whichever way you look at it.

It's not a journey if you aren't going SOMEWHERE. That's wandering.