Are you trying to make a point or just trolling? The only thing I can think of is you are trying to make the case that it is the fault of the players and not the studio that the game didn’t survive.
Correct, but as is the case with Warframe, which has so many more premium currency purchases you CAN make than D2, it is possible to have a live service game and also make something fantastic that players can enjoy for decades.
Correct me if I’m being ignorant here but I don’t know if there’s ever been a single company that’s pulled itself out of a long line of degenerate business practices
To be fair to Hello Games I’m pretty sure that Sony breathing down their necks for the release of No Man’s Sky really screwed them over during initial development. They had to rush big time and it was a huge increase in scope from their previous titles. Definitely not trying to undermine them though, NMS is a pretty great game now, especially compared to how rocky the start was.
As for R6 I remember hearing pretty recently there was a huge hacking incident that lead to players getting free shit en masse and effectively flipped the game economy on its head. I don’t know how they handled the fallout from that but considering it’s Ubisoft I doubt they learned anything substantial. Though if there’s one inadvertently good thing they did it was kicking off the Stop Killing Games movement by shutting down servers for The Crew.
I suspect chicken and egg is reversed in a lot of comments like this. Did popularity fall because they increased monetization? Or did they increase monetization because popularity fell and live services are expensive beasts? Gotta say, I expect it’s the latter, especially since we know Bungie wasn’t doing so hot when Sony bought them.
All you have to do is look at Warframe. Bungie had metric tons more money to work with than DE did during their early life. Warframe is better than D2 in almost every way.
I think whoever was driving the core development decisions at Bungie was actively hindering the success of the game, whether intentionally or not.
At the end of the day, the less money that is spent on the IP, the more money goes to bonuses/exec payouts.
I think the difference in money between them is exactly it, but in how many developers it took to make and how many it still takes to continue to add to it. There is no chance that Warframe had the capex or opex of Destiny at any point in either game’s life.
And as much as people’s minds can be blown by the size of executive bonuses, I have yet to see reporting that ties it as a major contributing factor to why games became too expensive to make or maintain. That cost is mostly in just how many people those games employ to make them multiplied across how many years they’re working on it.
I would recommend looking into the development history of Warframe. That, IMO, is the best example of GAAS that works for both the studio and the players.
Dark patterns are dark patterns, even if “the community” is more or less happy. Just means that it’s working. Being owned by Tencent actually does give them the freedom to “just be profitable” instead of squeezing each player for more and more revenue YOY, but the game still uses every retention mechanic in the book and leverages fake value by putting the MTX currency on “really good sales! Look how good the limited time deal is!!!” to keep people shelling out.
Tencent is diversified enough that they’ll probably never feel the need to tighten the screws on the Warframe studio directly.
Yeah that’s kind of the point with dark patterns. That’s not a term I made up either. Warframe isn’t as rife with them as othergames but the “forever GAAS” platform is nearly always leveraging patterns like this in some way.
I am aware that it is a thing, I just don’t see why you are insisting that, because of the model Warframe operates under, the developers are evil.
I think they are doing 10X better at putting the money back into the game and also using it to support the community aspects than any other live service game out there. I believe they have worked hard to make that happen and deserve props for not fucking over their fanbase like other developers, such as Bungie, do.
That’s cool, I enjoyed the game, but got frustrated with how shitty Bungie was with their refusal to learn from past mistakes. I wish this game lasted for much longer, but their pattern of repeating the same mistakes and releasing more mediocre DLCs than good ones drove me away.
Warframe has shown it is possible to exist for a long time, continuously drop quality content, and have a fantastic relationship and collaboration with their community.
Enshittification begins when the profits become a higher focus than the product.
Thank goodness they didn’t over deliver.
I am so spiteful that the upper/middle management destroyed a game with so much potential just to chase MTX and bonuses.
Y’all ate slop so they slopped it up even more.
God forbid a gamer enjoy playing a video game and hope a studio learns from their mistakes.
What mistake? They made decisions that resulted in more money for them and learned that they could get away with it for years
That mistake? You might want to take a look at recent Bungie news if you think that their mistakes didn’t cost them their fan base.
The people in charge don’t care, they already have the money
Are you trying to make a point or just trolling? The only thing I can think of is you are trying to make the case that it is the fault of the players and not the studio that the game didn’t survive.
Fool me once shame on you, fool me consistently for a fucking decade and yeah actually that’s on me
Do you think there might be a reason why people continued to come back to that game and play it? Maybe that it might be fun?
It is possible to enjoy something and acknowledge the fact that it could be much better.
It was created as a live-service game. It was never not a mtx fest.
Correct, but as is the case with Warframe, which has so many more premium currency purchases you CAN make than D2, it is possible to have a live service game and also make something fantastic that players can enjoy for decades.
Correct me if I’m being ignorant here but I don’t know if there’s ever been a single company that’s pulled itself out of a long line of degenerate business practices
The two off the top of my head would be No Man’s Sky and R6 Seige.
No Man’s Sky: https://imkingginger.substack.com/p/the-decade-long-journey-of-no-mans
Not sure how R6 is doing currently, but at one point they had a decent resurgence after they finally doubled down on improving the game.
These don’t match the exact scenario of Bungie, but they work as evidence that a studio CAN create something great out of something mediocre.
To be fair to Hello Games I’m pretty sure that Sony breathing down their necks for the release of No Man’s Sky really screwed them over during initial development. They had to rush big time and it was a huge increase in scope from their previous titles. Definitely not trying to undermine them though, NMS is a pretty great game now, especially compared to how rocky the start was.
As for R6 I remember hearing pretty recently there was a huge hacking incident that lead to players getting free shit en masse and effectively flipped the game economy on its head. I don’t know how they handled the fallout from that but considering it’s Ubisoft I doubt they learned anything substantial. Though if there’s one inadvertently good thing they did it was kicking off the Stop Killing Games movement by shutting down servers for The Crew.
Destiny was the tits though. I didnt play much of 2 because life got in the way, but the core gameplay was satisfying and silky-smooth.
Some of the best PVP I’ve ever experienced, I still miss it
I suspect chicken and egg is reversed in a lot of comments like this. Did popularity fall because they increased monetization? Or did they increase monetization because popularity fell and live services are expensive beasts? Gotta say, I expect it’s the latter, especially since we know Bungie wasn’t doing so hot when Sony bought them.
All you have to do is look at Warframe. Bungie had metric tons more money to work with than DE did during their early life. Warframe is better than D2 in almost every way.
I think whoever was driving the core development decisions at Bungie was actively hindering the success of the game, whether intentionally or not.
At the end of the day, the less money that is spent on the IP, the more money goes to bonuses/exec payouts.
I think the difference in money between them is exactly it, but in how many developers it took to make and how many it still takes to continue to add to it. There is no chance that Warframe had the capex or opex of Destiny at any point in either game’s life.
And as much as people’s minds can be blown by the size of executive bonuses, I have yet to see reporting that ties it as a major contributing factor to why games became too expensive to make or maintain. That cost is mostly in just how many people those games employ to make them multiplied across how many years they’re working on it.
Both chicken and egg situations say the same thing: live service GAAS is unsustainable at best and garbage at worst
I would recommend looking into the development history of Warframe. That, IMO, is the best example of GAAS that works for both the studio and the players.
Dark patterns are dark patterns, even if “the community” is more or less happy. Just means that it’s working. Being owned by Tencent actually does give them the freedom to “just be profitable” instead of squeezing each player for more and more revenue YOY, but the game still uses every retention mechanic in the book and leverages fake value by putting the MTX currency on “really good sales! Look how good the limited time deal is!!!” to keep people shelling out.
Tencent is diversified enough that they’ll probably never feel the need to tighten the screws on the Warframe studio directly.
You can play the game and not spend a penny on MTX to get the premium currency, this is why I said look it up.
So, the investors are happy, the players are happy, but the developers are actually evil because “dark patterns”?
Yeah that’s kind of the point with dark patterns. That’s not a term I made up either. Warframe isn’t as rife with them as other games but the “forever GAAS” platform is nearly always leveraging patterns like this in some way.
I am aware that it is a thing, I just don’t see why you are insisting that, because of the model Warframe operates under, the developers are evil.
I think they are doing 10X better at putting the money back into the game and also using it to support the community aspects than any other live service game out there. I believe they have worked hard to make that happen and deserve props for not fucking over their fanbase like other developers, such as Bungie, do.
As opposed to what?
I don’t think a game like this should last, and be developed, forever. It will inevitably lead to enshittification.
That’s cool, I enjoyed the game, but got frustrated with how shitty Bungie was with their refusal to learn from past mistakes. I wish this game lasted for much longer, but their pattern of repeating the same mistakes and releasing more mediocre DLCs than good ones drove me away.
Warframe has shown it is possible to exist for a long time, continuously drop quality content, and have a fantastic relationship and collaboration with their community.
Enshittification begins when the profits become a higher focus than the product.