Activision Blizzard adds 312 new skins to Overwatch to pay for e-Sports by milking customers using Micro-transactions

[Energycore]

1 minute ago, Misanthrope said:

2) You're poisoning the well implying the slippery slope is automatically fallacious here

Can I just bring some attention to this sentence? I find it amusing that people use so many tags to describe the shape of reasoning processes. Not because it's not something we can do, but because it's a resource to prove or disprove an argument independently of its actual content, which I find appalling.

25 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

And come on, a slippery slope argument? You're better than that.

Like saying that all slippery slope arguments are fallacious. Here's a quote from  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope

Quote

The strength of such an argument depends on the warrant, i.e. whether or not one can demonstrate a process that leads to the significant effect.

If one can demonstrate (or find evidence that strongly suggests) that the process does lead to an undesired conclusion, then there is value to this shape of argument. Dismissing it as a slippery slope upfront will prevent you from gathering valuable information about any topic.

 

 

(in this thread to my understanding: allowing ActiBlizz to bring up these microtransactions without criticism can be seen by other big games companies as a sign that consumers don't mind lootboxes / anything else that these microtransactions imply, which may lead to more incidents

[Nocte]

44 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Requirements of LTT TnR Section: Must contain an Opinion.

How?

That's not a fair comparison.

 

It's like saying "Buy our great $60 USD jersey and oh yeah you need to buy a ticket to a game this season to be able to buy the jersey".

Sure it can contain your own opinion while quoting objective sources.

 

Linking only to one source that spouses your argument is not constructive for a debate. Just like the piece on Amazon that you posted days ago. 

 

EDIT: Why would it be “buy a ticket to a game this season to be able to buy a jersey”? I don’t see your logic. 

Is it because it supports the teams? In this case teams get most of the profits from their own jersey sales as well. 

 

38 minutes ago, Energycore said:

While a lot of news is objective reporting on fact, it's silly to think that this is the extent of journalistic work. Opinion pieces, also called Editorials, show up commonly in newspapers and journals. Keeping people who report the news from bringing up their opinion would make the point of discussion moot.

It’s impossible not to bring up opinions while talking about news, but it does not have to be black and white. We are talking about two extremes here. 

 

One thing is constructive criticism that shows pros and cons of something, and then provide your own idea about it. Another thing is to continuously bash an entity for something by extrapolating only the things that support your argument, leaving all the rest behind. 

 

While not even newspapers are terribly good at this, just accepting bad reporting and not promoting constructive criticism leads to misinformation. 

[Misanthrope]

1 minute ago, Energycore said:

Can I just bring some attention to this sentence? I find it amusing that people use so many tags to describe the shape of reasoning processes. Not because it's not something we can do, but because it's a resource to prove or disprove an argument independently of its actual content, which I find appalling.

Sure you can. I also would like to bring attention to the fact that I actually elaborated on the rest of the post that you're not quoting here. Not sure why you object to not even the form of the argument but what amounts to the title.

[Energycore]

5 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

I didn't go as far as to suggest anyone here is an apologist outright, however I do think that a lot of the support from the decision come from the fact that this is a Blizzard game and they do get a lot more tolerance. You can attribute that to the quality of Overwatch, the quality of their past games, whatever the case might be it's undeniable that Blizzard it's still a darling company to PC gamers everywhere.

 

If this entire situation was the same with just a name swap for "Ubisoft" instead of Activision-Blizzard my contention is that many of the same opinions wouldn't be as defensive or conciliatory and understanding and would instead focus on the quality of the game in question and track record of a negatively perceived publisher/developer/both.

I would agree, though I'd still like the person I quoted to explain their claim

 

Reminds me of a quote that was pretty popular late last year: "If business is good, you can do no wrong; if business is bad, you can do no right"

[FirstArmada]

They're all cosmetic my guy what seems to be the problem with that?

[Sauron]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

Oh no, a developer adds cosmetic items to a game which you can either get from playing the game or pay for the ones you want! and not just that, if you go with the latter, 50% of the money goes towards esport teams instead of the developers!

 

What a terrible thing to do!

 

/sarcasm

 

 

Edit:

Actually, I think these are really good news. I think this is a great example of how to do lootboxes properly.

1) Release the game at full price.

2) Constantly release patches which adds new characters, tweak things, new maps etc, for free.

3) Have cosmetic things which you can either get from lootboxes (which you earn by simply playing the game), or by buying specific skins with money. Want to make your character look prettier (let's be real here, Witch Mercy is best Mercy).

4) Give some of the money you earn from lootboxes (50% is a big chunk) to the esport teams to support them.

 

On top of that, you can get one free skin of your choice for free, every day until February 13th.

 

I see this as a win-win-win situation.

• Players gets a great game with gets additional content for free. On top of that you never feel like you lost because someone had spent more money than you.
• Blizzard wins by having a reliable stream of revenue to fund future content with.
• eSports wins by getting funded by the developers themselves.

Good job Blizzard!

Let's compare this to, say, quake 3 for the sake of argument:

1) buy full price game with every launch character skin and map included in the asking price.

2) enjoy community made mods, art, maps, game modes and more for absolute free.

 

It would honestly be much less objectionable if they just released periodic expansion packs with new content at a reasonable price and allowed for mods. "Earning" (or rather, rolling) things through lootboxes without paying is slow and frustrating and this is a deliberate move to incentivise purchases - not to mention the ludicrous relative cost of individual skins. Are you seriously telling me 10 skins are worth almost the same as the whole game at box price?

 

Hell, let's compare it to blizzard's own heroes of the storm - it has the same loot box nonsense but at least it's free to play. Why does OW also deserve a baseline price if skin sales are clearly enough to sustain continued development and tournaments?

 

It scares me that people are reacting to this as if it were normal, as if it had always been this way, as if it were even GOOD for the customer...

[Energycore]

Just now, Misanthrope said:

Sure you can. I also would like to bring attention to the fact that I actually elaborated on the rest of the post that you're not quoting here. Not sure why you object to not even the form of the argument but what amounts to the title.

Not to take anything away from your argument (in fact I argue in your favor that labeling an argument beforehand may prevent you from reading into it and finding something valuable), I wanted to express my amusement in the act of what I'll call here "judging a book by its cover"

 

2 minutes ago, Eibe said:

It’s impossible not to bring up opinions while talking about news, but it does not have to be black and white. We are talking about two extremes here. 

 

One thing is constructive criticism that shows pros and cons of something, and then provide your own idea about it. Another thing is to continuously bash an entity for something by extrapolating only the things that support your argument, leaving all the rest behind. 

 

While not even newspapers are terribly good at this, just accepting bad reporting and not promoting constructive criticism leads to misinformation. 

Where in the OP or other content that you're criticising did you find a case of that? [the boldened bit]. Whether or not something counts as someone bashing a company is a subjective matter unless you can find a very clear definition for that.

 

I'm also curious what "the rest" that was left behind is. What content or reasoning is there that is against the OP's viewpoint? You are most welcome to bring them up and argue their validity.

[Taf the Ghost]

Paid Items in a game works just fine, so long as there is a split between Game Play and Non-Game Play. Any pay aspect for the "Game Play" part in a PvP environment will fail quickly because it becomes automatic Pay2Win.

 

People like to customize their looks. People love to give items to other people. Valve makes well over a billion USD in revenue from Dota2 + CS:GO microtransactions.

[SpriteNo5]

The usual predictable responses. If a game is actually good, then publishers can get away with a lot more nonsense because people seem to be too dim to handle liking a game but also voicing fair critique. People can't just enjoy a game from an objective perspective anymore it's either fanboy or hate with little in-between.

 

However if a game is just downright crap or merely average people feel much more able to jump on publishers for shady practices.

 

Charging for cosmetics is even worse than pay to win IMO, it's just a costume that has no impact on anything, only in our downtrodden, subservient, cap doughing rancid hyper consumerist society could we now see this as acceptable. They used to give us all this stuff as part of the original purchase.

 

Publishers are bigger than ever and richer than ever but still insist on infecting everything with greed. Make fewer, higher quality games and you'll cut costs while increasing sales. If you want to promote your own game by setting up an e-league (in the hope of extending the games life enormously) then you fund that. Why are people defending paying for the advertising of a product, they have already bought?

[Energycore]

Just now, Taf the Ghost said:

Paid Items in a game works just fine, so long as there is a split between Game Play and Non-Game Play. Any pay aspect for the "Game Play" part in a PvP environment will fail quickly because it becomes automatic Pay2Win.

 

People like to customize their looks. People love to give items to other people. Valve makes well over a billion USD in revenue from Dota2 + CS:GO microtransactions.

In my personal opinion, we should not focus our efforts in what AB is selling here (it's objectively not Pay2Win or unfair), but rather how it's being sold. I'm of course talking about the slot machine - like way of delivering the skins.

 

Let's say you want a specific skin for your character in Overwatch because you think it's cool - you're gonna have to roll in loot boxes that have no less than 312 options of drops you can get (and I think you can get duplicates in their loot boxes though I'm not sure).

 

This to me is the appalling thing. The process of buying the skin you want is very pricey on average, as well as frustrating an manipulative. That's what we should be opposed to, regardless of what it's actually selling you. And regardless of who does it.

 

I'll give my opinion on the Dota 2 loot boxes since I do play a lot of that game: I have decided never to purchase one of these and stick to the cosmetics I can directly buy, and because there are things that you can buy without going through this silly process, and the game is free, I find it easier to tolerate, but it's very much not something I'd give my money to. Thankfully sometimes the skins locked behind loot boxes end up on the marketplace after a while.

 

On the other hand, we don't have any evidence suggesting that the Overwatch skins will ever be directly purchasable, there are no skins that currently are (not that I'm aware, please correct me if I'm wrong), and the game is not free. That's a lot of circumstances that aggravate their actions.

[Taf the Ghost]

1 minute ago, Energycore said:

In my personal opinion, we should not focus our efforts in what AB is selling here (it's objectively not Pay2Win or unfair), but rather how it's being sold. I'm of course talking about the slot machine - like way of delivering the skins.

 

Let's say you want a specific skin for your character in Overwatch because you think it's cool - you're gonna have to roll in loot boxes that have no less than 312 options of drops you can get (and I think you can get duplicates in their loot boxes though I'm not sure).

 

This to me is the appalling thing. The process of buying the skin you want is very pricey on average, as well as frustrating an manipulative. That's what we should be opposed to, regardless of what it's actually selling you. And regardless of who does it.

 

I'll give my opinion on the Dota 2 loot boxes since I do play a lot of that game: I have decided never to purchase one of these and stick to the cosmetics I can directly buy, and because there are things that you can buy without going through this silly process, and the game is free, I find it easier to tolerate, but it's very much not something I'd give my money to. Thankfully sometimes the skins locked behind loot boxes end up on the marketplace after a while.

 

On the other hand, we don't have any evidence suggesting that the Overwatch skins will ever be directly purchasable, there are no skins that currently are (not that I'm aware, please correct me if I'm wrong), and the game is not free. That's a lot of circumstances that aggravate their actions.

Random "loot boxes" can work, it just depends what is in the box and the commonality rate.  I'm definitely not a fan of them, on general principle, but they can work. Though I think it should be noted that Governments are probably going to put a solid kibosh on them in the near future. If they get flagged as Gambling in any US State or European Country, it's the end of them in general.

[Doobeedoo]

Far from those that actually make such things terrible in some games. 

But yeah, I did expect this game to be f2p though. 

[EunSoo]

this thread is impossible to track...

[LAwLz]

52 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

2) You're poisoning the well implying the slippery slope is automatically fallacious here: It isn't when we already have seen the end result from other companies like EA doing microtransactions and loot boxes on games you pay for up front too.

There is a massive difference between what EA was doing with Battlefront, and what Blizzard does with Overwatch.

If you can't see the difference then I don't know what to tell you.

 

52 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

The example Activision-Blizzard is giving today will be taken as a success story for their model by others like EA or Ubisoft which are much less concerned with quality control and don't enjoy or care about positive public perception like Blizzard does.

Wait, do I understand you correctly.

You think Blizzard is doing a good thing and handling things well, but you don't want them to do that because you think it will encourage other companies to do it, but worse?

That makes no sense. By that logic we can't do anything, ever. Tesla shouldn't make electric cars because it will encourage Volkswagen to make one, and it might not be as good!

 

42 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

I didn't go as far as to suggest anyone here is an apologist outright, however I do think that a lot of the support from the decision come from the fact that this is a Blizzard game and they do get a lot more tolerance. You can attribute that to the quality of Overwatch, the quality of their past games, whatever the case might be it's undeniable that Blizzard it's still a darling company to PC gamers everywhere.

There are only two people in this thread that seems to care which company is behind the game. You and AluminiumTech.

Everyone else is giving examples and explanations for why this particular implementation of microtransactions is OK while others aren't.

 

42 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

If this entire situation was the same with just a name swap for "Ubisoft" instead of Activision-Blizzard my contention is that many of the same opinions wouldn't be as defensive or conciliatory and understanding and would instead focus on the quality of the game in question and track record of a negatively perceived publisher/developer/both.

I doubt it. There are massive, fundamental differences between how EA and Ubisoft usually handles microtransactions compared to how Blizzard does it.

You need to focus less on what logo is on the box of the game, and more on what reasons people are actually giving.

 

 

 

9 minutes ago, Energycore said:

On the other hand, we don't have any evidence suggesting that the Overwatch skins will ever be directly purchasable, there are no skins that currently are (not that I'm aware, please correct me if I'm wrong), and the game is not free. That's a lot of circumstances that aggravate their actions.

Ehm, you can buy specific skins in Overwatch. I know the OP is painful to read but it is right there in it.

You also get a free skin (which you can choose freely) every day you login.

[Nocte]

9 minutes ago, Energycore said:

Where in the OP or other content that you're criticising did you find a case of that? [the boldened bit]. Whether or not something counts as someone bashing a company is a subjective matter unless you can find a very clear definition for that.

 

I'm also curious what "the rest" that was left behind is. What content or reasoning is there that is against the OP's viewpoint? You are most welcome to bring them up and argue their validity.

If we have to find a dictionary definition of every word we use it will take longer than an “entmoot” (an eternity). 

Across the whole post of the OP it is possible to notice unnecessary call outs such as: not being “pro-consumer”, or “greedy snakes” etc. 

 

The “rest” that was left behind was citing the potential benefits etc.

Usually a constructive argument consists of:

- Data

- A warrant with its backing

- Qualifier, claim

- A counter-argument to demonstrate critical thinking

- A rebuttal of the counter argument in support of your claim

 

This is obviously being extrimistic and academic, but I would like to see an extent of constructive criticism in what is considered “news”. Maybe I am just being too academic myself, I could understand that. But I still believe that only one side of the discussion was argumented. 

 

Finally, I never mentioned the non-validity of the data. I simply questioned the way it was being delivered to readers. 

[Energycore]

Just now, Taf the Ghost said:

Random "loot boxes" can work, it just depends what is in the box and the commonality rate.  I'm definitely not a fan of them, on general principle, but they can work.

Is there an example of a game where they worked? Or do you have a hypothetical where they work? Not trying to argue, but I am curious because I had been reasoning 100% against loot boxes before.

[Energycore]

Just now, SCGazelle said:

this thread is impossible to track...

I know what you mean. It's not hard to track convos where you're quoted but the rest is kind of a blur lol

[Energycore]

1 minute ago, LAwLz said:

Ehm, you can buy specific skins in Overwatch. I know the OP is painful to read but it is right there in it.

You also get a free skin (which you can choose freely) every day you login.

In that case I suck and disregard that bit.

 

So wait, then can you buy anything in Overwatch that you want OR buy a loot box with stuff you can directly buy?

[Taf the Ghost]

6 minutes ago, Energycore said:

Is there an example of a game where they worked? Or do you have a hypothetical where they work? Not trying to argue, but I am curious because I had been reasoning 100% against loot boxes before.

Dota2's Seasonal Events would qualify, I believe.

 

Though there's a huge discussion about "works".

[flibberdipper]

Still better than Cockstar who've been milking GTA V for going on 5 years now...

[SpriteNo5]

1 minute ago, tmcclelland455 said:

Still better than Cockstar who've been milking GTA V for going on 5 years now...

It's like comparing cancer to aids, they're both bad and one shouldn't be held up as an example to justify the other.

[ItsMitch]

2 minutes ago, tmcclelland455 said:

Still better than Cockstar who've been milking GTA V for going on 5 years now...

Yeah, I tried to find out how many Shark Cards have been sold but Steam DB doesnt hold the data......

[LAwLz]

7 minutes ago, Energycore said:

In that case I suck and disregard that bit.

 

So wait, then can you buy anything in Overwatch that you want OR buy a loot box with stuff you can directly buy?

I haven't played for quite some time now so I don't know if the info in OP applies to all skins, or just the new ones.

Every day you login you get 100 credit. You can also buy more credit for real money if you want.

That credit is used to buy skins. You don't get a random skins (would defeat the purpose of having team specific skins, right?). You pick whichever one you want.

 

 

The old ones were from loot boxes though, or from in-game credits you got from loot boxes.

 

Edit:

47 minutes ago, Energycore said:

(in this thread to my understanding: allowing ActiBlizz to bring up these microtransactions without criticism can be seen by other big games companies as a sign that consumers don't mind lootboxes / anything else that these microtransactions imply, which may lead to more incidents

It could also be seen as an encouragement for other developers to handle microtransactions properly.

Instead of doing like EA where you could literally get invulnerability from loot boxes, or other overpowered abilities, things are kept cosmetic-only, as well as easy to get without spending money.

 

The slippery slope goes both ways, but I think both of them are stupid. The world isn't black and white. There are a lot of different shades of gray in-between.

[Energycore]

Just now, Taf the Ghost said:

Dota2's Seasonal Events would qualify, I believe.

 

Though there's a huge discussion about "works".

Hehe, yeah whether something "works" depends on whether it works for you. You definitely almost don't hear people criticise Dota 2's way of monetizing itself, yet it brings in stupid amounts of dough to GabeN and company.

 

10 minutes ago, Eibe said:

If we have to find a dictionary definition of every word we use it will take longer than an “entmoot” (an eternity). 

Across the whole post of the OP it is possible to notice unnecessary call outs such as: not being “pro-consumer”, or “greedy snakes” etc. 

 

The “rest” that was left behind was citing the potential benefits etc.

Usually a constructive argument consists of:

- Data

- A warrant with its backing

- Qualifier, claim

- A counter-argument to demonstrate critical thinking

- A rebuttal of the counter argument in support of your claim

 

This is obviously being extrimistic and academic, but I would like to see an extent of constructive criticism in what is considered “news”. Maybe I am just being too academic myself, I could understand that. But I still believe that only one side of the discussion was argumented. 

 

Finally, I never mentioned the non-validity of the data. I simply questioned the way it was being delivered to readers. 

I think we're arguing semantics now. I just wanted to know why you think the OP is bashing AB, and in which bits.

 

1 minute ago, LAwLz said:

I haven't played for quite some time now so I don't know if the info in OP applies to all skins, or just the new ones.

Every day you login you get 100 credit. You can also buy more credit for real money if you want.

That credit is used to buy skins. You don't get a random skins (would defeat the purpose of having team specific skins, right?). You pick whichever one you want.

 

 

The old ones were from loot boxes though, or from in-game credits you got from loot boxes.

I think something we can agree on is that it's really not as bad as Battlefront II or Shadow of War. Where we draw the line is important though because this move should be discussed so as to not give AB the sense that gamers will play along with anything they do.

[Blebekblebek]

Ofcourse it's going to happen

 

Players number isn't going to increase all the time

They need steady revenue even after no one buys the game anymore when (hypothetically) all people already has it.

 

Cosmetics/costume is one of Micro Transaction that I don't mind.

as long it doesn't have any extra stats (ex: +100hp/+100damage)

 

LoL is bad example for comparison

 

Compare it with Dota2, and yes that is F2P game, but the point is even if you don't buy anything you are still have same progress as the other, just not the way your character look.