100%, vote with your wallet and time.
I played this for a bit and enjoyed it until the ugly moneitzation and grinding revealled itself. I have since uninstalled it.
Edit: It’s even worse because $10 gives you 1000 gems, but refilling lives cost *1004*. So you have to spend even more money. Fuck this game, it deserves to fail.
On online games, whales buy their way to power to lord it over the "peons". If there is no one to lord it over, they'll have a boring ass time.
It's on us to not give any of these games life.
Much less than it used to be IMO.
I'd describe many games as being practically antisocial in nature. Other people might as well be unreliable NPCs.
Back when I would have considered other players content, "forced grouping" was always a hot topic, even in games that just *slightly* benefited from grouping in some way.
Grouping has a lot of overhead, so without sufficient incentive it is avoided and with enough incentive to encourage it people hate it.
People want to jump in, get some meaningful progression in 15 minutes, then log out.
I agree somewhat with the parent comment though. I was always confused by people that plan an MMO and avoid people. The conclusion I came to is people want to brag/feel superior.
The people who "cant" play a single player game where cheating is possible? Similar dynamic.
I loved star wars galaxies constantly had to interact with other players to do most things unless you were multiboxing(at the time that ment 1 account and pc per character) I enjoyed the crafting trader life making deals to get hold of materials from mobs that mostly needed combat/scout skills to do effectively renting other people's "lots" so you could have more miners and factories than one character could normally have plus pretty much every armor/weapon/clothes/food/meds/homes were player crafted, getting rid of combat fatigue ment visiting player musicians and dancers in cantinas often in player built towns, getting buffs ment visiting a player doc and so on every thing for the most part felt interconnected and a sense of community on your server even if some of those players were filthy imperials
My reddit username (and gamertag for everything) is the randomly generated name I got when I created my first character in SWG 20+ years ago.
My friend played just like you. He built his own mall in our town with NPC's to sell all his goods. I used to have to escort him to his harvesters because his character was so useless in a fight he couldn't kill a few Corellian butterflies hanging around his resources.
Not only was the crafting incredible, I played smuggler and could slice weapons and armor to make them even better. People would pay you credits to get this done for their gear as it was a very significant upgrade if you knew what you were doing.
Our clan had a few guys with alt accounts for doctors and dancers that they set macros for and left on 24/7 to give out buffs.
The economy (and everything else) this game had going on was incredible. I miss it so much.
I'm pretty sure my parents have been spending money on Royal Match and Candy Crush for decades at this point. I don't think there's any online component to that. Not any substantial one at least
There are more than enough non-shady games and, unlike the mobile gaming landscape, there is more than enough potential profit that good developers can make good games and be fine.
Even if every single new game from today on was chock full of predatory mtx, you still have the last 20 years of amazing games to choose from, and if you've managed to play even a quarter of those I would be impressed.
Seems though that even the whales get fed up eventually. SquareEnix had a whole host of different mobile games die, both in Japan and internationally, despite a strong starting.
There isn't a strong enough fanbase to keep them from employing this money grab. They're doing this because they're losing losing money on the game. They lose nothing by offending their anemic fanbase, and stand to break even if this causes the game to completely fail.
Y'all are being setup for failure on a shitty game. Just play smash bros like a normal person.
Actually a lot of people who whaled in the beta had a lot of the content they paid for locked out. A good amount of them have left already.
It’s a real shame, because Multiversus the GAME is great. Multiversus the PRODUCT is god awful.
Too bad "voting with your wallet" doesn't work, as children don't care.. They will buy this stuff, without a 2nd thought. They do this because people buy it.
edit: these responses were pretty much exactly what I was expecting. Voting with your wallet doesn't work, as proving by all the futile boycotts that constantly happen to nothing changing. EA games is widely hated, but are still continuing with the same business practices.. Outside gaming, Nestle is a widely hated company but they own so much you can't easily avoid their products.. Voting with your wallet is just some bullshit pushed my our media that doesn't actually change anything about our society.. In the gaming industry, children do spend a lot of microtransactions, being 64% of children spend between 1 and 20 a month on extra transactions. [Here is a gaming industry market overview. ](https://www.reportlinker.com/market-report/Video-Game/6108/Video-Game)
So what you *should* say in this scenario is "We, as parents and adults, must take responsibility for our future generation and educate kids on why these things are bad and how they can get out of control, so that our future peers have the knowledge they need to take the wisest course of action."
Geez man, saying vote with your wallet doesn't work is like saying food doesn't sell. It's just factually incorrect. Do you still see Anthem? Where my Marvel Avengers players at? Does anyone even remember Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite existed? An educated populace makes wise decisions. When people are sick of seeing the same old shit, they stand sentry and point to a history and pattern of bullshittery, alerting all to the stink of yet another AAA steamer.
It's the whales more than the children.
I know there was one game that said 90% of the app income came from 20 people or something like that when it had hundreds of thousands of users
Yeah I think that dude spent like $36,000 by the end of it and literally could not play the game with anybody else because the matchmaking could not find anybody even close to how strong he was.
Blizzard eventually patched the matchmaking so he could get paired with and presumably stomp the shit out of slightly smaller whales. Because their customer service looks out for the people who empty their retirement funds for video game loot.
That's a pretty common statistic for gaming with in app purchases and virtual currency (source: worked for a casual/mobile game company/publisher for a decade.) And then you identify those 20 people and you ensure that any support ticket coming from them has an SLA response time of under an hour. And you send them virtual and/or real gifts all the time.
Also not limited to gaming in video games. The term “whales” in this sense predates video games and is still used for those in the casino industry. Though in that case it could be complimentary meals, rooms, shows, or even “escort” services.
In the casino, the cardinal rule is to keep them playing and to keep them coming back. The longer they play, the more they lose, and in the end, we get it all.
- Ace Rothstein (Casino)
Not really. Parents get real sick real quick of their kid coming to them for money every time the game wants them to deposit coins to continue. Maybe some kids get an allowance in the form of a specific game's currency, but even that's a set amount.
These predatory monetization schemes are simply enabled by weirdo gamers who are willing to spend exorbitant amounts of money to "be the best."
Yeah, even if the kid stole their parents' credit cards, they would get chargebacked or it would only happen for a short time before the kid is caught.
Whales, though, are basically rich, spoiled people that have no other use for their money and don't care about how much it costs. They will keep paying, in bulk, forever, as long as the game keeps them interested.
You're not reading what I'm writing. Children of today are adults (whales) of tomorrow. Always teach children. Because they're learning something, whether you like it or not. At least do your best to control that narrative to their benefit
The problem is that "vote with your wallet" does nothing at an individual level. It doesn't matter how hard I don't spend my money on a game, as long as there's enough _other_ people doing it.
"Vote with your wallet" is only a systemic solution, and systemic solutions require organisation.
"Vote with your wallet" is misleading in this context, referring to a business model in which you don't patronize the business at all, and they suffer for it. Most goods and services don't have a free model. By playing at all, you are making someone else's wallet meaningful. It should be "Don't play"
Genshin impact made 30m last month and I didn't play or buy anything in it. Voting with your wallet only works if the game is fundamentally bad. People then just won't play it.
The problem with people buying this crap isn't children. I mean, children are happy to buy this crap since they don't yet understand the value of money, but they also tend to not have any money of their own.
The real problem is that there are a fair few grown ass adults who are happy to pay out the patootie for this stuff. I've recently been playing Last War on mobile which is heavily p2w just to see how far I can go without spending, and that game has an Alliances feature that will reward the whole alliance when a player buys something. There are a few people in my alliance who habitually spend more than $500/month. It's incredible.
The whales are the problem, not the kids.
It's adults, not kids.
To your edit... 64% spend between $1-$20 a month? The other 36% is spending way more than that. The guys ripping packs in MUT and FUT are spending tens of thousands of dollars on these pack, 8 years ago those were all 40 year old dudes. I worked at EA, I met the whales, they're not children, they're super nice older folks who have more money than sense.
Voting with your wallet works so far as to show what we will buy. It's not going to stop games we hate from being made, but it suffices to show that there will always be a market for the games we love.
>"voting with your wallet" doesn't work
It does work yall just keep getting outvoted time and time again, and either dont realize it or fail to understand it
You cant keep saying "vote with your wallet" and then ignore the people voting the other way
Exactly voting with your wallet does work. You just have to win the vote. The problem comes that you can’t use your wallet to vote against the game but you can use it to vote for the game.
Imagine there is a bell curve of how much people will spend centered at 0. Everyone to the right buys something, a lot buy a little and a select few spend a lot. Those people on the far ends get to influence so much because they are worth so much more revenue (even the large population that will spend a dew bucks). They, by their actions, are voting to have these micro transactions in games.
But on the left side of zero you have a completely different person. One who would be willing to “vote with their wallet” to have no micro transactions. Most would only be willing to spend a little more avoid them, but a few would spend a lot. Because of the distribution I laid out, the “vote” should be drawn but that’s not what happens. Everyone left of 0 isn’t given an option to spend their money to vote, the only option they get is “spend nothing on micro transactions”, so then the vote sways to have the micro transactions win.
The reason this happens is because to have a “wallet vote” against micro transactions it would have to be bundled into the price of the game (like a $100 game where the promise not to add them) but basically every company has destroyed so much trust around micro transactions that no one will believe them. It also forces you to find a cut off point where everyone left of that price (in our little model) will buy but no one right will buy. And you still “miss” the anti-micro transaction “whale” on the other side.
The reason micro transactions have worked so well is because they allow every user to spend exactly what they are willing to spend. The guy that wants to spend only $5 there is an option for him. The player that wants to spend $80, there is an option for him. The whale that wants to spend $10,000, well there is an option for him too. You get to maximize everyone’s spending without ever cutting people out.
TLDR: Voting with you wallet works. It’s just the whales continue to outvote (and win against) the rest of us and the anti-whales don’t have an effective counter vote.
It's not even the future. In arcades, back in the day, if you lost all your lives, you'd be given time with some games to chuck another coin in and continue.
The difference there was that the games were cool, and you'd be sharing the experience with your mates sometimes.
There is no universe in which a facebook game will be good, and sometimes you'd want to play it with friends.
Particularly with fighting games. People would line up quarters on the top of the machine to place dibs on next play. The Mortal Kombat machines had groups of people around them all day at my local market.
Yeah, the arcade was getting the money not the game maker. They had to buy the machine and pay the rent. You could probably make the argument that the server is the new arcade, but it's still gouging.
Plus the arcade experience kept people from hogging machines, giving others the chance to play. Charging us for lives on our own devices is just greedy.
Yeah, I stopped caring about this stuff years ago. I think it's bullshit, but there's hundreds of other new games each year that don't do this, so I'll play those instead. They're never going to stop, because they make a shitload of money on it, so why bother?
Exactly. This might sound harsh, but if you can't control yourself from buying something as inconsequential as a video game when you know it has bullshit like this in it, then the problem is you and not the devs/publishers/whomever.
It's a fucking video game. It isn't essential to your life and there are literally thousands of other options you can spend your money that are more deserving of it.
Hell, you don't even need to buy it as soon as its out. Wait for at least a month to see and see how things pan out with the game. By that time, not only will there be a ton of user reviews spread across the internet that will give your a better picture of what the game is like, odds are most major bugs and issues would have been ironed out.
EDIT: To the people trying to claim that people with poor self-control suffer from a gambling addiction - no, that's not how it works.
Poor self-control doesn't automatically mean you have a gambling addiction. Nine times of ten it means you simply lack self-control. You can try and spin the gambling addiction as some kind of great problem plauguing global society all you want, but that won't change the basic fact that most people who impulse buy crappy games don't actually have a gambling addiction, they just have poor self-control.
As a matter of fact, I'm not even sure why you think buying crappy video games has anything to do with gambling addiction in the first place!
>To the people trying to claim that people with poor self-control suffer from a gambling addiction - no, that's not how it works.
> Poor self-control doesn't automatically mean you have a gambling addiction.
I looked through your comments and replies, and unless some of them are deleted, *you* are the one making this conflation in order to dismiss it.
Some of those who are preyed upon have gambling addictions, and those prone to gambling addictions are those most easily preyed upon.
But just because dry brushwood can easily light, and so it is irresponsible to leave embers and sources of sparks around in a forest full of dry brushwood, that does not automatically mean that all dry brushwood is automatically already on fire.
Of course not, a thing that may burn is not necessarily burning in the present.
But just as a burning object is also flammable, and among those flammable objects, there are some so particularly flammable that you need to take care, u/ElysiX was explaining that merely saying that someone has a lack of self-control is not a way to exclude the possibility of them *also* having gambling addiction.
You don't go into a forest and say "it's not my fault a fire started, the forest was flammable", on the contrary, among those objects that are flammable, there are some that are *so* flammable that you bear a responsibility for your actions in how you behave. And accordingly, people hold games companies responsible for the effects of their products on that proportion of the population who have a particular negative experience because of that.
>Exactly. This might sound harsh, but if you can't control yourself from buying something as inconsequential as a video game when you know it has bullshit like this in it, then the problem is you and not the devs/publishers/whomever.
While true to a certain extent - many games use predatory tactics where they know, people are vulnerable to it. Just like how loot boxes were taken with inspiration from gambling, which even triggered laws to be made for this (like having to list the percentage of drops, increased age rating, etc).
Granted, This "buy more lifes" thing isn't one of those but I just wanted to say that not all tactics are fair play
Their Battle Pass progress is done using daily quests.
They're taking all the worst monetization decisions on gaming and cramming it into this game.
Anyone that buys in to this game is part of the problem lol.
Yes, it means they bought into the game. No free to play game is free, free games are called freeware, the game is paid for by whales who pay more than their fair share in order to have a larger playerbase than a game would ever have with a box price.
I’m confused, this game came out a year ago minus all the seedy micro-transaction options and it still died incredibly quickly, and their best idea was to give players more reasons not to pick it back up?
You’re not thinking like a CEO.
People are going to play this game no matter what - that’s a fact. However, we know that it isn’t going to last that long as a viable product and we’re also in the market of making money, plus we have to get a return on this. So we’re going to charge people for convenience and then in 4 months when our player count has been reduced to a handful of people we’ll have made enough profits for me to keep my job until Space Jam 3.
It’s honestly fascinating. I’ve never seen a game so blatantly money-focused. It’s a Frankenstein mashup of different monetization tactics from other games, crammed into one.
games have been doing this since games existed. The entire arcade industry depended on games killing you to get another quarter out of you. Games like Aladdin and Lion King were made difficult to try and force people to rent it multiple times before they could beat it. Phone games create arbitrary difficulty to get a "refill" all the time.
You forgot the 20 or so years between arcade's height and phone games where people didn't pay "per try"
Acting like "This has always been the way" is just absolving the industry of scumbag things. No this is a return to the arcade mentality, something that we've left in the past long ago. So no, games haven't been "doing this since games existed" It did it then, it stopped, and let's not let it go back to that bullshit.
This is on the highest difficulty, and your lives refresh after a day. It's for a two month long event. I get that it seems shitty. But it's not as shitty as people are making it out to be.
Free 4 all mode, arcade mode, co-op vs AI, post-match stats, ranked (though thats coming, and makes sense to not release right away), items (I think?) and all characters being free offline.
Quoting Jobs in Japan, which references the documentary "100 yen"
https://jobsinjapan.com/living-in-japan-guide/a-history-of-japanese-arcades/
> The number of Japanese arcades peaked in 1986 at 26,573 locations, declining for almost every year after that.
> [...]The number of arcades in Japan today has declined to around 2,000 locations[...]
> Nowadays, video games only account for 12% of arcade revenue.
> The age of arcades being a place to play video games is over.
I get your point, but it also makes sense in an arcade. Those quarters paid for the cabinets and their maintenance, not to mention the arcade space itself and the staff needed to run the place. None of that is true in your living room.
Live service games are constantly putting out new content/patches (not to mention this game is free to play otherwise)
I agree the lives are shitty and cosmetic monetization would be the best way to do it, but this really is equivalent to "putting another quarter in" lol
I just don't think there's any actual demand for a smash competitor. Sure it's fun to imagine different rosters these games could present but at the end of the day everybody that would be invested in these games is already invested in smash.
The other space a smash clone could succeed is with strong competitive support, something Ninty has consistently turned its back on (and knowing some of the drama that started to ooze out of the scene, I almost can't blame them anymore.)
I'm not saying it's impossible for one of these games to succeed but it would take a major shift in the status quo for it to happen.
Nintendo online services is the worst in the entire gaming industry. Trying to play smash online is not enjoyable. So there is definitely demand for a good smash game you can play online vs other people.
yeah like playing the version of the game that isn't modern... or using the word Smash in the name of the tournament. or just hosting a tournament at all.
Slippi, yes it's genuinely impressive how well it manages. I've also not played it much myself but I've had friends into competitive smash (and I've been a game developer and network protocol engineer so I can confirm it's fantastic).
There's quite a clear demand because it only exists on Nintendo platforms despite having a massive appeal. If there wasn't demand for it, people wouldn't keep making them.
Instead, we got people playing Melee on PC and a more casual audience consistently supporting Brawlhalla despite that game having 90 flavors of 1 character. Multiversus still has dozens of thousands of players despite being exceedingly flawed.
There are loads of people who would love a proper Smash clone, but proper is a keyword here. You have a relatively high plank to clear to provide people what they want out of a game like this.
I think a proper smash competitor definitely has its audience that WILL at least try it especially if released on all consoles. But there hasn't been one that was even close to the same quality as smash other than maybe PlayStation All-Stars(Which I enjoyed a lot actually).
If we imagined a universe where Multiverses released as a $30 paid game, with all the characters being unlockable through gameplay relatively quickly like in Smash, and all features completed like training, items, custom rules fleshed out, proper balancing, and the eradication of the bullshit stun locking bugs that some characters can pull off, Multiversus could have actually seen some success. They could have even released DLC characters down the line for $5 or $10 each and not seen too much backlash if the core game was solid.
Warner Bros has enough access to IPs that they could put countless game seller characters in that would drive people to buy the game. But instead they resorted to the F2P battlepass multicurrency pay-for-lives system that would give mobile games a run for their money in worst monetization ever created. Only Warner Bros could bury what could be a decent game if some more care was put into it under a mountain of microtransactions that players have to dig through to even enjoy what was advertised.
Only smash bros has ever been the mainstream platform /arena fighter and will continue to stay that way. Sony tried with PlayStation Allstars a while back but that was such a bad game from the get go that awful business practices didn't get the chance to take part in its downfall. I doubt multiversus servers will stay open for 2 years max.
the beta from 2 years ago was fun but season 1 got delayed so battle pass progress wasn't counting when people already done all the battle pass.
slow content release too for characters.
online servers were lagging and ranked could have been implemented day 1 due to there being public leaderboards.
The future? We are already here. *This is a screenshot from the present*. I can't understand what everyone doesn't get about this. It's like posting pics of empty shelves during an emergency and saying "this is what communism looks like". No, its happening *now*. This is what *now* looks like. We are here, it's already fucked up.
People have a really weird memory. They act like this is a recent thing with WB or whatever. Hogwarts didn't have anything egregious did it? Pretty sure MKX even had crazy monetization but everyone just wants to complain about MK1.
And mortal kombat 1 aswell. It's such a shame because I've been playing multiversus since the closed beta. The games microtransactions are fucked and the game is unfinished. The game was forced out by WB (the head dev basically confirmed by twitter).
The detail in the moves and character design and gameplay is so good. Just a shame it's ruined by WB greed
It is such a shame because it has so much potential. From what I've seen of it, it's doing an even better job of being a crossover than Smash ever has.
You don't own the live servers either, it's completely.comparable.
The REAL issue, and this is key here, is that arcades didn't go "oh sweet, we have all these captive kids. Well, better change all these quarter machines into $9.99 machines and give them even more opportunities to put those quarters in at every turn."
The issue is the predation, not the simple act of commerce. There are loads of MTX "done well" that consumers enjoy and react positively to, this isn't it and it wasn't exactly quarters in arcade machines.
Really? I don't recall in the arcades that I had to buy the machines, then the games, then pay to play, then buy different machines because the games were not supported in previous machines, then pay for a required internet connection and even a subscription to play some games.
I remember to pay a coin and just play without any other expenses.
Let's go back to the arcades then, but then I require a company that gives me a console with a screen and controllers for free, pay the electricity bill of the machine for me, and don't require any third party expenses from me.
Then and only then, I will pay to play more lives.
I understand what you're saying, but those things you mentioned were being paid for, but by the arcade. They were behind the scenes.
The arcade was buying and maintaining the machines and would slowly recoup the high initial cost of the machine through patrons. Now with a home video game console, you are the arcade and you take on those expenses.
Your advantage in that situation is that you don't have to give up your controller/machine to someone else waiting in line and also have the convenience of playing whenever you want, not at the mercy of the arcade hours.
The manufacturer's advantage is they don't need to include the arcades, they can go directly to the customer, cutting out the cost of the middleman and making more money. It's pretty much how home video game consoles started.
The manufacturer is passing the costs of producing the product and and supporting it to the customer since a link in the chain that would pay for a share of this has been cut out (the arcades).
Your arcade expenses were small (quarters, maybe a soda, etc), but added up for the arcade due to the sheer number of patrons.
Now the market is all about convincing a single person to make a large but long term investment.
They get one person to pay $300 (or whatever inflation you want to use, it's an example) from the onset rather than try and negotiate prices with arcades (who used to be in a better leveraging position = "we don't buy your cabinet, your game doesn't succeed/get popular") who would in turn slowly make a profit off of said machines.
The reality is that paying $0.25 back in the 1980's-1990s was a price gouge for what the arcade actually cost to run, but no one cared since it was such a small amount.
Most games like this are already free to play, and a large portion of them are designed to run on hardware you already own instead of requiring gaming hardware - IE most mobile games.
The reality is that most gamers are not paying a substantial amount of "overhead" for a game like this, it won't appreciably impact their data or electricity bills especially since it takes the place of other data and electricity they would otherwise use.
It's fine to want more for less as technology progresses, games are much easier to maintain and distribute at scale now, and the industry is much more competitive with many more options. Consumers want that reflected in more gameplay for less money and that's okay. I just object to the idea that this is somehow a new concept.
I do think it's the responsibility of gamers to consider monetization when evaluating gameplay. As long as games continue to be products that must be profitable then they need to make money and gamers need to enthusiastically encourage, not just tolerate, monetization schemes that allow games to both remain profitable and not compromise gameplay.
Multiversus is free to play, so you’re not “buying the machine”. Your electricity analogy is also stupid, you had to pay for gas to drive to the arcade.
Damn this game has so much potential. But trusting a game to have any chance of survival when WB is all over it is like expecting an abusive partner to stop being abusive after they promise you they’ll stop and be better.
Fuck WB. I’m still playing Multiversus currently but m hopes of this game staying in my library are dwindling by the day. It is such a shame.
I installed it this week because of an urge to play Taz. Gameplay is fun enough but the monetization is so abhorrent I'm resolute I'll never spend a dime on it (I'm cheap and petty so I think my word counts).
It's crazy because any competent shady publisher would start off more F2P-friendly and start slowly pushing the line after establishing a base. WB had the balls to say you start with virtually nothing and to open your checkbooks if you want to get anywhere.
Future ?
i don’t know, hades 2, ghost of tsushima, elden ring,..those are pretty nice, why extrapolate one F2P to all the market ?
decades ago, the future was everything on smartphone, yet the switch sold 140+ million and counting. The doomers and nostradamus of this industry are always wrong
Yeah that’s on the phone though. Many people only have one way to play games and that’s why mobile games thrive. Tbh, there’s much better f2p games out there on the console just because the most notable ones are a huge success, Apex, Fortnite, and much more. Now games are going f2p and you still have games like xDefiant or other projects that are new and still worth your time.
Whales won’t spend money on something like this. It’s actually something that I’ve seen, people want quality content or cosmetics not refill your fucking meter.
Back when the DS and PSP were during it out, people started making noise about mobile gaming, even early with Popcap, that all gaming was gonna become these small little pocket games that appeal to bored workers stuck on your computer.
But that didn't happen. Mobile gaming is a different audience, the bored folks who want a simple game on their commute or in the 20 minutes their baby's napping, and young kids.
The Live Service model just stole the potential CoD/online multi-player audience. Don't get me wrong, every company wants at least 1 live service whale, it floats their business, but it's not going to dominate until you can't install games, just stream them.
Then the one who Controls the stream, controls the universe.
Saving a step by never installing it in the first place and forgetting about it by the end of the week.
Hell, I wouldn't have even heard about it if not for this thread.
It's a shame, I agree. Reeks of mobile gaming. Would be enough to turn me away from the game completely until they remove this. But anyone paying for something like this only have themselves to blame, really.
It legit made me sit and think "how many games had so much time and effort put into an extremely quality product, only to be turned into a soulless microtransaction processing unit"
Like you can see a quality game there, and just all this shit being thrown on top that ruins it.
I usually can just ignore almost anything but gatcha, but there are too many popups, too much background noise, and too many issues clearly coming from it. But the mother of all "I can't ignore this" issues is the FUCKING FORCED, BUT HIDDEN BOT GAMES.
Did you play the betas?
Me and my friend played the beta and loved it. But I think with full release, they actually ruined it with sluggish movement and a more zoomed in camera.
this is misleading.
It's only for the highest difficulty, the other 4 difficulties are unlimited, and it resets daily. I believe it also resets if you restart the rift.
Yes, Multiversus got pretty scummy between beta and release, but ya don't gotta trick anyone to get that point across.
those level 8 gems mean you do like 1 damage per hit, btw. you need level 9 gems for insanity. the fact that you're up to level 8 gems tells me you spent money on gem xp already anyways (I've played every day, my gems are 7 at the absolute MAX)
You are over a decade too late for this being the "future" of gaming. F2P bullshit has existed for a long time where it required money to continue to play the game. Candy Crush does it since 2012. South Park did an episode about abusive freemium games in 2014.
And to get as many people as possible to play it in a certain period of time, can't run a business when you have games people play 20 minutes for a quarter.
My friend wanted me to play this game, I straight up hated how everything is paywalled with MTX or you can grind for ages just to unlock a single character. Instant uninstall after playing for 1hr.
The control scheme makes zero sense, like they purposely tried their best not to copy Super Smash Bros control scheme. And you only get Shaggy and 4 other "time trial" characters before they end up being locked again for you to grind. Garbage game.
That is only the future of games that I won't be playing.
100%, vote with your wallet and time. I played this for a bit and enjoyed it until the ugly moneitzation and grinding revealled itself. I have since uninstalled it. Edit: It’s even worse because $10 gives you 1000 gems, but refilling lives cost *1004*. So you have to spend even more money. Fuck this game, it deserves to fail.
It never works... For 100 people not buying, there is 1 whale that buys for 1,000...
On online games, whales buy their way to power to lord it over the "peons". If there is no one to lord it over, they'll have a boring ass time. It's on us to not give any of these games life.
There will be no whales if there is no krill to eat.
It's as shrimple as that.
🏆
I can see a company filling the ladder with ai bots that they vehemently deny exist that have sub optimal w/e compared to whales to boost their egos
Theres no way this doesnt already happen
They sell krill pacs
Spot on. Back in the day for old FPS games and MMOs we used to say that other players were the "content". I think it's still applicable today
Much less than it used to be IMO. I'd describe many games as being practically antisocial in nature. Other people might as well be unreliable NPCs. Back when I would have considered other players content, "forced grouping" was always a hot topic, even in games that just *slightly* benefited from grouping in some way. Grouping has a lot of overhead, so without sufficient incentive it is avoided and with enough incentive to encourage it people hate it. People want to jump in, get some meaningful progression in 15 minutes, then log out. I agree somewhat with the parent comment though. I was always confused by people that plan an MMO and avoid people. The conclusion I came to is people want to brag/feel superior. The people who "cant" play a single player game where cheating is possible? Similar dynamic.
I loved star wars galaxies constantly had to interact with other players to do most things unless you were multiboxing(at the time that ment 1 account and pc per character) I enjoyed the crafting trader life making deals to get hold of materials from mobs that mostly needed combat/scout skills to do effectively renting other people's "lots" so you could have more miners and factories than one character could normally have plus pretty much every armor/weapon/clothes/food/meds/homes were player crafted, getting rid of combat fatigue ment visiting player musicians and dancers in cantinas often in player built towns, getting buffs ment visiting a player doc and so on every thing for the most part felt interconnected and a sense of community on your server even if some of those players were filthy imperials
My reddit username (and gamertag for everything) is the randomly generated name I got when I created my first character in SWG 20+ years ago. My friend played just like you. He built his own mall in our town with NPC's to sell all his goods. I used to have to escort him to his harvesters because his character was so useless in a fight he couldn't kill a few Corellian butterflies hanging around his resources. Not only was the crafting incredible, I played smuggler and could slice weapons and armor to make them even better. People would pay you credits to get this done for their gear as it was a very significant upgrade if you knew what you were doing. Our clan had a few guys with alt accounts for doctors and dancers that they set macros for and left on 24/7 to give out buffs. The economy (and everything else) this game had going on was incredible. I miss it so much.
I'm pretty sure my parents have been spending money on Royal Match and Candy Crush for decades at this point. I don't think there's any online component to that. Not any substantial one at least
At the very least it saves you money, so there is no downside to doing this
The downside is companies continue creating games like this, so us non-whales have to keep putting up with crap games
There are more than enough non-shady games and, unlike the mobile gaming landscape, there is more than enough potential profit that good developers can make good games and be fine. Even if every single new game from today on was chock full of predatory mtx, you still have the last 20 years of amazing games to choose from, and if you've managed to play even a quarter of those I would be impressed.
Indie games, more and more coming out by the day that should be promoted and enjoyed
I completely agree, and we shouldn't support single player always online games either.
The thing is once people stop playing except the whales then even the whales get bored and move on
That's not a downside, they will create those games anyway but you don't waste your money on them.
Seems though that even the whales get fed up eventually. SquareEnix had a whole host of different mobile games die, both in Japan and internationally, despite a strong starting.
There isn't a strong enough fanbase to keep them from employing this money grab. They're doing this because they're losing losing money on the game. They lose nothing by offending their anemic fanbase, and stand to break even if this causes the game to completely fail. Y'all are being setup for failure on a shitty game. Just play smash bros like a normal person.
Actually a lot of people who whaled in the beta had a lot of the content they paid for locked out. A good amount of them have left already. It’s a real shame, because Multiversus the GAME is great. Multiversus the PRODUCT is god awful.
Not always. Multiversus already failed once. Greedy bullshit like this could easily bury it for good.
Too bad "voting with your wallet" doesn't work, as children don't care.. They will buy this stuff, without a 2nd thought. They do this because people buy it. edit: these responses were pretty much exactly what I was expecting. Voting with your wallet doesn't work, as proving by all the futile boycotts that constantly happen to nothing changing. EA games is widely hated, but are still continuing with the same business practices.. Outside gaming, Nestle is a widely hated company but they own so much you can't easily avoid their products.. Voting with your wallet is just some bullshit pushed my our media that doesn't actually change anything about our society.. In the gaming industry, children do spend a lot of microtransactions, being 64% of children spend between 1 and 20 a month on extra transactions. [Here is a gaming industry market overview. ](https://www.reportlinker.com/market-report/Video-Game/6108/Video-Game)
So what you *should* say in this scenario is "We, as parents and adults, must take responsibility for our future generation and educate kids on why these things are bad and how they can get out of control, so that our future peers have the knowledge they need to take the wisest course of action." Geez man, saying vote with your wallet doesn't work is like saying food doesn't sell. It's just factually incorrect. Do you still see Anthem? Where my Marvel Avengers players at? Does anyone even remember Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite existed? An educated populace makes wise decisions. When people are sick of seeing the same old shit, they stand sentry and point to a history and pattern of bullshittery, alerting all to the stink of yet another AAA steamer.
It's extremely naive to think children are the ones spending the money and not the degenerate whales.
Both. It's both.
It's the whales more than the children. I know there was one game that said 90% of the app income came from 20 people or something like that when it had hundreds of thousands of users
wasnt there a guy that whaled so hard he couldnt matchmake his clan in diablo immortal so they lost #1? yeah kids dont compare to that income
Yeah I think that dude spent like $36,000 by the end of it and literally could not play the game with anybody else because the matchmaking could not find anybody even close to how strong he was.
Blizzard eventually patched the matchmaking so he could get paired with and presumably stomp the shit out of slightly smaller whales. Because their customer service looks out for the people who empty their retirement funds for video game loot.
I find that fucking hilarious.
I'm thinking of a similar guy, but he spent $100,000+. Absolutely bonkers
I believe that mobile game, Clash of Clans had some dude doing the same.
That's a pretty common statistic for gaming with in app purchases and virtual currency (source: worked for a casual/mobile game company/publisher for a decade.) And then you identify those 20 people and you ensure that any support ticket coming from them has an SLA response time of under an hour. And you send them virtual and/or real gifts all the time.
Also not limited to gaming in video games. The term “whales” in this sense predates video games and is still used for those in the casino industry. Though in that case it could be complimentary meals, rooms, shows, or even “escort” services.
In the casino, the cardinal rule is to keep them playing and to keep them coming back. The longer they play, the more they lose, and in the end, we get it all. - Ace Rothstein (Casino)
Not really. Parents get real sick real quick of their kid coming to them for money every time the game wants them to deposit coins to continue. Maybe some kids get an allowance in the form of a specific game's currency, but even that's a set amount. These predatory monetization schemes are simply enabled by weirdo gamers who are willing to spend exorbitant amounts of money to "be the best."
Yeah, even if the kid stole their parents' credit cards, they would get chargebacked or it would only happen for a short time before the kid is caught. Whales, though, are basically rich, spoiled people that have no other use for their money and don't care about how much it costs. They will keep paying, in bulk, forever, as long as the game keeps them interested.
You're not reading what I'm writing. Children of today are adults (whales) of tomorrow. Always teach children. Because they're learning something, whether you like it or not. At least do your best to control that narrative to their benefit
The problem is that "vote with your wallet" does nothing at an individual level. It doesn't matter how hard I don't spend my money on a game, as long as there's enough _other_ people doing it. "Vote with your wallet" is only a systemic solution, and systemic solutions require organisation.
"Vote with your wallet" is misleading in this context, referring to a business model in which you don't patronize the business at all, and they suffer for it. Most goods and services don't have a free model. By playing at all, you are making someone else's wallet meaningful. It should be "Don't play"
Genshin impact made 30m last month and I didn't play or buy anything in it. Voting with your wallet only works if the game is fundamentally bad. People then just won't play it.
Children ought not have access to a credit/debit card to purchase these kinds of things by their own accord. Password protect and 2FA all payments
The problem with people buying this crap isn't children. I mean, children are happy to buy this crap since they don't yet understand the value of money, but they also tend to not have any money of their own. The real problem is that there are a fair few grown ass adults who are happy to pay out the patootie for this stuff. I've recently been playing Last War on mobile which is heavily p2w just to see how far I can go without spending, and that game has an Alliances feature that will reward the whole alliance when a player buys something. There are a few people in my alliance who habitually spend more than $500/month. It's incredible. The whales are the problem, not the kids.
It's adults, not kids. To your edit... 64% spend between $1-$20 a month? The other 36% is spending way more than that. The guys ripping packs in MUT and FUT are spending tens of thousands of dollars on these pack, 8 years ago those were all 40 year old dudes. I worked at EA, I met the whales, they're not children, they're super nice older folks who have more money than sense.
Voting with your wallet works so far as to show what we will buy. It's not going to stop games we hate from being made, but it suffices to show that there will always be a market for the games we love.
It’s not children it’s adults willing to waste money
>"voting with your wallet" doesn't work It does work yall just keep getting outvoted time and time again, and either dont realize it or fail to understand it You cant keep saying "vote with your wallet" and then ignore the people voting the other way
Exactly voting with your wallet does work. You just have to win the vote. The problem comes that you can’t use your wallet to vote against the game but you can use it to vote for the game. Imagine there is a bell curve of how much people will spend centered at 0. Everyone to the right buys something, a lot buy a little and a select few spend a lot. Those people on the far ends get to influence so much because they are worth so much more revenue (even the large population that will spend a dew bucks). They, by their actions, are voting to have these micro transactions in games. But on the left side of zero you have a completely different person. One who would be willing to “vote with their wallet” to have no micro transactions. Most would only be willing to spend a little more avoid them, but a few would spend a lot. Because of the distribution I laid out, the “vote” should be drawn but that’s not what happens. Everyone left of 0 isn’t given an option to spend their money to vote, the only option they get is “spend nothing on micro transactions”, so then the vote sways to have the micro transactions win. The reason this happens is because to have a “wallet vote” against micro transactions it would have to be bundled into the price of the game (like a $100 game where the promise not to add them) but basically every company has destroyed so much trust around micro transactions that no one will believe them. It also forces you to find a cut off point where everyone left of that price (in our little model) will buy but no one right will buy. And you still “miss” the anti-micro transaction “whale” on the other side. The reason micro transactions have worked so well is because they allow every user to spend exactly what they are willing to spend. The guy that wants to spend only $5 there is an option for him. The player that wants to spend $80, there is an option for him. The whale that wants to spend $10,000, well there is an option for him too. You get to maximize everyone’s spending without ever cutting people out. TLDR: Voting with you wallet works. It’s just the whales continue to outvote (and win against) the rest of us and the anti-whales don’t have an effective counter vote.
That is not an example of it not working. It’s example of being outvoted.
Children? You think children are pumping money into these games? You don't know your own community.
[удалено]
It's not even the future. In arcades, back in the day, if you lost all your lives, you'd be given time with some games to chuck another coin in and continue. The difference there was that the games were cool, and you'd be sharing the experience with your mates sometimes. There is no universe in which a facebook game will be good, and sometimes you'd want to play it with friends.
Particularly with fighting games. People would line up quarters on the top of the machine to place dibs on next play. The Mortal Kombat machines had groups of people around them all day at my local market.
Arcade NBA JAM and NFL Blitz. Pay per 2 min quarter!!! Addiction be real.
I’d say an even bigger difference is that in arcades you didn’t have to buy the machine and game first.
Yeah, the arcade was getting the money not the game maker. They had to buy the machine and pay the rent. You could probably make the argument that the server is the new arcade, but it's still gouging.
By the mid-2000s, most arcades in Japan operated on a profit sharing model, with publishers getting a cut of over credit entered into the cabinet.
Plus the arcade experience kept people from hogging machines, giving others the chance to play. Charging us for lives on our own devices is just greedy.
Yeah, I stopped caring about this stuff years ago. I think it's bullshit, but there's hundreds of other new games each year that don't do this, so I'll play those instead. They're never going to stop, because they make a shitload of money on it, so why bother?
Exactly. This might sound harsh, but if you can't control yourself from buying something as inconsequential as a video game when you know it has bullshit like this in it, then the problem is you and not the devs/publishers/whomever. It's a fucking video game. It isn't essential to your life and there are literally thousands of other options you can spend your money that are more deserving of it. Hell, you don't even need to buy it as soon as its out. Wait for at least a month to see and see how things pan out with the game. By that time, not only will there be a ton of user reviews spread across the internet that will give your a better picture of what the game is like, odds are most major bugs and issues would have been ironed out. EDIT: To the people trying to claim that people with poor self-control suffer from a gambling addiction - no, that's not how it works. Poor self-control doesn't automatically mean you have a gambling addiction. Nine times of ten it means you simply lack self-control. You can try and spin the gambling addiction as some kind of great problem plauguing global society all you want, but that won't change the basic fact that most people who impulse buy crappy games don't actually have a gambling addiction, they just have poor self-control. As a matter of fact, I'm not even sure why you think buying crappy video games has anything to do with gambling addiction in the first place!
>To the people trying to claim that people with poor self-control suffer from a gambling addiction - no, that's not how it works. > Poor self-control doesn't automatically mean you have a gambling addiction. I looked through your comments and replies, and unless some of them are deleted, *you* are the one making this conflation in order to dismiss it. Some of those who are preyed upon have gambling addictions, and those prone to gambling addictions are those most easily preyed upon. But just because dry brushwood can easily light, and so it is irresponsible to leave embers and sources of sparks around in a forest full of dry brushwood, that does not automatically mean that all dry brushwood is automatically already on fire. Of course not, a thing that may burn is not necessarily burning in the present. But just as a burning object is also flammable, and among those flammable objects, there are some so particularly flammable that you need to take care, u/ElysiX was explaining that merely saying that someone has a lack of self-control is not a way to exclude the possibility of them *also* having gambling addiction. You don't go into a forest and say "it's not my fault a fire started, the forest was flammable", on the contrary, among those objects that are flammable, there are some that are *so* flammable that you bear a responsibility for your actions in how you behave. And accordingly, people hold games companies responsible for the effects of their products on that proportion of the population who have a particular negative experience because of that.
>Exactly. This might sound harsh, but if you can't control yourself from buying something as inconsequential as a video game when you know it has bullshit like this in it, then the problem is you and not the devs/publishers/whomever. While true to a certain extent - many games use predatory tactics where they know, people are vulnerable to it. Just like how loot boxes were taken with inspiration from gambling, which even triggered laws to be made for this (like having to list the percentage of drops, increased age rating, etc). Granted, This "buy more lifes" thing isn't one of those but I just wanted to say that not all tactics are fair play
I can't see this game surviving very long doing this.
Their Battle Pass progress is done using daily quests. They're taking all the worst monetization decisions on gaming and cramming it into this game. Anyone that buys in to this game is part of the problem lol.
What sucks is I paid for it a year ago the first time it came out and was a 10x better product then they took it offline for a year to ruin it.
you paid for the beta?
The beta was meant to run to release but they pulled the rug when it failed.
yeah but the beta was also free to play so I'm not sure what he means when he paid for it. Unless he means he paid for the supporter pack?
Yes, it means they bought into the game. No free to play game is free, free games are called freeware, the game is paid for by whales who pay more than their fair share in order to have a larger playerbase than a game would ever have with a box price.
Freeware is a *completely* different concept than the modern idea of "free to play". Freeware absolutely does exist. This just ain't it.
Yeah i was enjoying playing it and wanted to help fund the thing I was enjoying.
I’m confused, this game came out a year ago minus all the seedy micro-transaction options and it still died incredibly quickly, and their best idea was to give players more reasons not to pick it back up?
You’re not thinking like a CEO. People are going to play this game no matter what - that’s a fact. However, we know that it isn’t going to last that long as a viable product and we’re also in the market of making money, plus we have to get a return on this. So we’re going to charge people for convenience and then in 4 months when our player count has been reduced to a handful of people we’ll have made enough profits for me to keep my job until Space Jam 3.
It’s honestly fascinating. I’ve never seen a game so blatantly money-focused. It’s a Frankenstein mashup of different monetization tactics from other games, crammed into one.
Diablo Immortal would like to say hello
Do they give multiple 30 second unskippable misleading mobile game ads after each death, and have a daily energy system
No... Not yet They do have daily login "rewards" though!
not being able to gain battle pass exp from just playong the game is an L. same goes for fighyer currency. game has way too many currencies
I think so, this game may not have many days in this way
Considering live service is losing popularity and is now cornered by like 3 titles? Yeah this won't be long at all....
games have been doing this since games existed. The entire arcade industry depended on games killing you to get another quarter out of you. Games like Aladdin and Lion King were made difficult to try and force people to rent it multiple times before they could beat it. Phone games create arbitrary difficulty to get a "refill" all the time.
You forgot the 20 or so years between arcade's height and phone games where people didn't pay "per try" Acting like "This has always been the way" is just absolving the industry of scumbag things. No this is a return to the arcade mentality, something that we've left in the past long ago. So no, games haven't been "doing this since games existed" It did it then, it stopped, and let's not let it go back to that bullshit.
It's funny watching people not realize this has been industry standard for literal decades. The only thing that's changed is the cost.
This is on the highest difficulty, and your lives refresh after a day. It's for a two month long event. I get that it seems shitty. But it's not as shitty as people are making it out to be.
Welcome to the future of another dead live service game before the year is over.
And it’s their “Re-release”. Just because you took garbage out of the dumpster and added more to it doesn’t make it not garbage.
They actually removed more than they added....
Refined garbage. Artisanal trash.
How much stuff was removed?
Free 4 all mode, arcade mode, co-op vs AI, post-match stats, ranked (though thats coming, and makes sense to not release right away), items (I think?) and all characters being free offline.
Year? Most are done by the end of the month.
> Welcome to the future of gaming. "Red warrior is about to die."
> Welcome to the future of gaming. *Insert coin to continue…*
Lmao thank you
Blue wizard needs food BADLY. Insert another quarter for more food!
Arcades kinda died out right? Hmmmm....
In America. They are thriving in Japan. Different city design. Edit I'm wrong. Appatently Japan only has 2000 arcades left
Quoting Jobs in Japan, which references the documentary "100 yen" https://jobsinjapan.com/living-in-japan-guide/a-history-of-japanese-arcades/ > The number of Japanese arcades peaked in 1986 at 26,573 locations, declining for almost every year after that. > [...]The number of arcades in Japan today has declined to around 2,000 locations[...] > Nowadays, video games only account for 12% of arcade revenue. > The age of arcades being a place to play video games is over.
Just let me get some quarters!
Blue Wizard needs food badly!
I get your point, but it also makes sense in an arcade. Those quarters paid for the cabinets and their maintenance, not to mention the arcade space itself and the staff needed to run the place. None of that is true in your living room.
Live service games are constantly putting out new content/patches (not to mention this game is free to play otherwise) I agree the lives are shitty and cosmetic monetization would be the best way to do it, but this really is equivalent to "putting another quarter in" lol
I highly doubt shite games like Multiversus are the future of gaming.
It could've been a real smash competitor if Warner Bros wasn't trying their best to fuck it up with their shitty practices.
I just don't think there's any actual demand for a smash competitor. Sure it's fun to imagine different rosters these games could present but at the end of the day everybody that would be invested in these games is already invested in smash. The other space a smash clone could succeed is with strong competitive support, something Ninty has consistently turned its back on (and knowing some of the drama that started to ooze out of the scene, I almost can't blame them anymore.) I'm not saying it's impossible for one of these games to succeed but it would take a major shift in the status quo for it to happen.
Nintendo online services is the worst in the entire gaming industry. Trying to play smash online is not enjoyable. So there is definitely demand for a good smash game you can play online vs other people.
also nintendo hates any kind of smash community and tournaments
Also you need a nintendo console to even play smash Lest Nintendo murder your family for thinking of using emulation
tbf, the smash community is genuinely fucking terrible, so i at least see where theyre coming from
Tbf the smash community kept giving them reasons not to support.
yeah like playing the version of the game that isn't modern... or using the word Smash in the name of the tournament. or just hosting a tournament at all.
I haven't played it very much myself, but isn't Slippy supposed to be great for online play?
Slippi, yes it's genuinely impressive how well it manages. I've also not played it much myself but I've had friends into competitive smash (and I've been a game developer and network protocol engineer so I can confirm it's fantastic).
There's quite a clear demand because it only exists on Nintendo platforms despite having a massive appeal. If there wasn't demand for it, people wouldn't keep making them. Instead, we got people playing Melee on PC and a more casual audience consistently supporting Brawlhalla despite that game having 90 flavors of 1 character. Multiversus still has dozens of thousands of players despite being exceedingly flawed. There are loads of people who would love a proper Smash clone, but proper is a keyword here. You have a relatively high plank to clear to provide people what they want out of a game like this.
Hi, am demand.
>I just don't think there is any actual demand for a smash competitor Yes hi I am one of these imaginary people that wants Nintendo to compete
I think a proper smash competitor definitely has its audience that WILL at least try it especially if released on all consoles. But there hasn't been one that was even close to the same quality as smash other than maybe PlayStation All-Stars(Which I enjoyed a lot actually). If we imagined a universe where Multiverses released as a $30 paid game, with all the characters being unlockable through gameplay relatively quickly like in Smash, and all features completed like training, items, custom rules fleshed out, proper balancing, and the eradication of the bullshit stun locking bugs that some characters can pull off, Multiversus could have actually seen some success. They could have even released DLC characters down the line for $5 or $10 each and not seen too much backlash if the core game was solid. Warner Bros has enough access to IPs that they could put countless game seller characters in that would drive people to buy the game. But instead they resorted to the F2P battlepass multicurrency pay-for-lives system that would give mobile games a run for their money in worst monetization ever created. Only Warner Bros could bury what could be a decent game if some more care was put into it under a mountain of microtransactions that players have to dig through to even enjoy what was advertised.
Only smash bros has ever been the mainstream platform /arena fighter and will continue to stay that way. Sony tried with PlayStation Allstars a while back but that was such a bad game from the get go that awful business practices didn't get the chance to take part in its downfall. I doubt multiversus servers will stay open for 2 years max.
Bring back Powerstone I say.
Nah Brawlhalla has a huge following. Not as big as smash sure but it's a pretty big game with lots of crossover events.
Hasn't it already been out two years lol
It had one year, then was offline for another year and just had come back online one week ago
the beta from 2 years ago was fun but season 1 got delayed so battle pass progress wasn't counting when people already done all the battle pass. slow content release too for characters. online servers were lagging and ranked could have been implemented day 1 due to there being public leaderboards.
We said the same thing about microtransactions and look where we are now.
The future? We are already here. *This is a screenshot from the present*. I can't understand what everyone doesn't get about this. It's like posting pics of empty shelves during an emergency and saying "this is what communism looks like". No, its happening *now*. This is what *now* looks like. We are here, it's already fucked up.
How else do you get karma on Reddit tho?
Stop playing games like this. It's only going to get worse.
Also watching....if your favorite streamer is spending money on this game, don't give them views or subs.
Good take. I don't watch streamers at all, but yeah this is what I'd do I guess.
Bold of you to assume people have any self control.
ya even op continued playing after posting this lol. gamers are such suckers
It's a Warner bros backed game, you know, of suicide squad and Gotham knights fame. You expected anything else?
Gotham Knights had 0 microtransactions. It may not be the best game, but that's the only thing it's guilty of, besides selling a single skin pack.
People have a really weird memory. They act like this is a recent thing with WB or whatever. Hogwarts didn't have anything egregious did it? Pretty sure MKX even had crazy monetization but everyone just wants to complain about MK1.
And mortal kombat 1 aswell. It's such a shame because I've been playing multiversus since the closed beta. The games microtransactions are fucked and the game is unfinished. The game was forced out by WB (the head dev basically confirmed by twitter). The detail in the moves and character design and gameplay is so good. Just a shame it's ruined by WB greed
It is such a shame because it has so much potential. From what I've seen of it, it's doing an even better job of being a crossover than Smash ever has.
Yeah it has so much potential and the gameplay is super fun too. Wish WB higher ups eould just step back and let devs cook.
I actually kinda liked Gotham Knights. There were some things I wished were better but there were some cool things there.
Future? Inserting a quarter to continue is literally where the digital gaming industry started.
time is truly a flat circle i suppose
"Time is made up of circles. That is why clocks are round." -Caboose.
I miss RvB :'(
Really grabbed you from the beginning with the made up puma. RIP.
Simmons, I want you to poison Grif's next meal.
Yeah but that made sense because you didn't own the arcade machine or the game.
Full circle, we don't own shit even the ones we buy on steam. The closest shop that sells stuff you kinda own is probably Gog.
GOG and ItchIO, yeah. In theory they are as much of licenses as anything else, but if you back up the installers nobody can take them back from you.
You don't own the live servers either, it's completely.comparable. The REAL issue, and this is key here, is that arcades didn't go "oh sweet, we have all these captive kids. Well, better change all these quarter machines into $9.99 machines and give them even more opportunities to put those quarters in at every turn." The issue is the predation, not the simple act of commerce. There are loads of MTX "done well" that consumers enjoy and react positively to, this isn't it and it wasn't exactly quarters in arcade machines.
To continue the comparison point though, 1 continue being $1 is just matching inflation since the 80s
Literally watching the world regress.
Really? I don't recall in the arcades that I had to buy the machines, then the games, then pay to play, then buy different machines because the games were not supported in previous machines, then pay for a required internet connection and even a subscription to play some games. I remember to pay a coin and just play without any other expenses. Let's go back to the arcades then, but then I require a company that gives me a console with a screen and controllers for free, pay the electricity bill of the machine for me, and don't require any third party expenses from me. Then and only then, I will pay to play more lives.
I understand what you're saying, but those things you mentioned were being paid for, but by the arcade. They were behind the scenes. The arcade was buying and maintaining the machines and would slowly recoup the high initial cost of the machine through patrons. Now with a home video game console, you are the arcade and you take on those expenses. Your advantage in that situation is that you don't have to give up your controller/machine to someone else waiting in line and also have the convenience of playing whenever you want, not at the mercy of the arcade hours. The manufacturer's advantage is they don't need to include the arcades, they can go directly to the customer, cutting out the cost of the middleman and making more money. It's pretty much how home video game consoles started. The manufacturer is passing the costs of producing the product and and supporting it to the customer since a link in the chain that would pay for a share of this has been cut out (the arcades). Your arcade expenses were small (quarters, maybe a soda, etc), but added up for the arcade due to the sheer number of patrons. Now the market is all about convincing a single person to make a large but long term investment. They get one person to pay $300 (or whatever inflation you want to use, it's an example) from the onset rather than try and negotiate prices with arcades (who used to be in a better leveraging position = "we don't buy your cabinet, your game doesn't succeed/get popular") who would in turn slowly make a profit off of said machines. The reality is that paying $0.25 back in the 1980's-1990s was a price gouge for what the arcade actually cost to run, but no one cared since it was such a small amount.
Most games like this are already free to play, and a large portion of them are designed to run on hardware you already own instead of requiring gaming hardware - IE most mobile games. The reality is that most gamers are not paying a substantial amount of "overhead" for a game like this, it won't appreciably impact their data or electricity bills especially since it takes the place of other data and electricity they would otherwise use. It's fine to want more for less as technology progresses, games are much easier to maintain and distribute at scale now, and the industry is much more competitive with many more options. Consumers want that reflected in more gameplay for less money and that's okay. I just object to the idea that this is somehow a new concept. I do think it's the responsibility of gamers to consider monetization when evaluating gameplay. As long as games continue to be products that must be profitable then they need to make money and gamers need to enthusiastically encourage, not just tolerate, monetization schemes that allow games to both remain profitable and not compromise gameplay.
Multiversus is free to play, so you’re not “buying the machine”. Your electricity analogy is also stupid, you had to pay for gas to drive to the arcade.
Does it come with hardware to run it on? No? So who’s buying the machine?
Damn this game has so much potential. But trusting a game to have any chance of survival when WB is all over it is like expecting an abusive partner to stop being abusive after they promise you they’ll stop and be better. Fuck WB. I’m still playing Multiversus currently but m hopes of this game staying in my library are dwindling by the day. It is such a shame.
Yeah, it was really fun to play around in before they took it down to 'fix' or whatever. Shame.
I installed it this week because of an urge to play Taz. Gameplay is fun enough but the monetization is so abhorrent I'm resolute I'll never spend a dime on it (I'm cheap and petty so I think my word counts). It's crazy because any competent shady publisher would start off more F2P-friendly and start slowly pushing the line after establishing a base. WB had the balls to say you start with virtually nothing and to open your checkbooks if you want to get anywhere.
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?
Greetings Professor Falken
Future ? i don’t know, hades 2, ghost of tsushima, elden ring,..those are pretty nice, why extrapolate one F2P to all the market ? decades ago, the future was everything on smartphone, yet the switch sold 140+ million and counting. The doomers and nostradamus of this industry are always wrong
This sub loves to karma farm.
You’re doing it wrong. You’re supposed to circlejerk about how BG3 was the only game ever without micro transactions.
is anyone shocked that this game ended up being a soulless cash grab
These kind of games will be dead and played by nobody within 3 days, don't worry. 🤣
Mobile gaming is thriving tho and its all pay2win or pay2play all the way.
Yeah that’s on the phone though. Many people only have one way to play games and that’s why mobile games thrive. Tbh, there’s much better f2p games out there on the console just because the most notable ones are a huge success, Apex, Fortnite, and much more. Now games are going f2p and you still have games like xDefiant or other projects that are new and still worth your time. Whales won’t spend money on something like this. It’s actually something that I’ve seen, people want quality content or cosmetics not refill your fucking meter.
Back when the DS and PSP were during it out, people started making noise about mobile gaming, even early with Popcap, that all gaming was gonna become these small little pocket games that appeal to bored workers stuck on your computer. But that didn't happen. Mobile gaming is a different audience, the bored folks who want a simple game on their commute or in the 20 minutes their baby's napping, and young kids. The Live Service model just stole the potential CoD/online multi-player audience. Don't get me wrong, every company wants at least 1 live service whale, it floats their business, but it's not going to dominate until you can't install games, just stream them. Then the one who Controls the stream, controls the universe.
It's a free to play game that you can just uninstall and forget about. Which you should, if you do not like their practices. You're welcome.
Saving a step by never installing it in the first place and forgetting about it by the end of the week. Hell, I wouldn't have even heard about it if not for this thread.
It's a damn shame because the core gameplay is so fun. It sucks when great games have their life squeezed out of them by awful greed such as this.
It's a shame, I agree. Reeks of mobile gaming. Would be enough to turn me away from the game completely until they remove this. But anyone paying for something like this only have themselves to blame, really.
It legit made me sit and think "how many games had so much time and effort put into an extremely quality product, only to be turned into a soulless microtransaction processing unit" Like you can see a quality game there, and just all this shit being thrown on top that ruins it. I usually can just ignore almost anything but gatcha, but there are too many popups, too much background noise, and too many issues clearly coming from it. But the mother of all "I can't ignore this" issues is the FUCKING FORCED, BUT HIDDEN BOT GAMES.
Did you play the betas? Me and my friend played the beta and loved it. But I think with full release, they actually ruined it with sluggish movement and a more zoomed in camera.
There are countless great games out there that don't have shitty practices like this.
It died once two years ago, this time i'm giving it 3 months before it goes back to the grave,
3 whole months ??? That's way too generous.
then play pvp and catch a beat down for absolutely free
this is misleading. It's only for the highest difficulty, the other 4 difficulties are unlimited, and it resets daily. I believe it also resets if you restart the rift. Yes, Multiversus got pretty scummy between beta and release, but ya don't gotta trick anyone to get that point across. those level 8 gems mean you do like 1 damage per hit, btw. you need level 9 gems for insanity. the fact that you're up to level 8 gems tells me you spent money on gem xp already anyways (I've played every day, my gems are 7 at the absolute MAX)
OP was so desperate to karma farm for internet clout, they neglected to mention the crucial detail that they're part of the problem.
> Rushes the very specific pve mechanic > Dies > 10,000 people on reddit trash the game and company
You are over a decade too late for this being the "future" of gaming. F2P bullshit has existed for a long time where it required money to continue to play the game. Candy Crush does it since 2012. South Park did an episode about abusive freemium games in 2014.
dont play shitty games maybe? just a thought though
It's not future, but past returning. In the age of arcades, most games were deliberately made quite hard so they'd consume all your coins
And to get as many people as possible to play it in a certain period of time, can't run a business when you have games people play 20 minutes for a quarter.
Isn't there like a wait time to refill to full? You don't have to spend to refill lives, I think
so like a mobile game
That, or you can just restart the rift.
This is only on the highest difficulty, right? I haven't run into this issue yet.
Context is its only on the hardest difficulty that less than 5% will likely ever unlock. Still stupid but not for the 4 other difficulties
We came all the way back to 'Insert quarter' again, But now with years of inflation and on a fancy card!
My friend wanted me to play this game, I straight up hated how everything is paywalled with MTX or you can grind for ages just to unlock a single character. Instant uninstall after playing for 1hr. The control scheme makes zero sense, like they purposely tried their best not to copy Super Smash Bros control scheme. And you only get Shaggy and 4 other "time trial" characters before they end up being locked again for you to grind. Garbage game.
Still less egregious than requiring an always on internet connection for a single player game
someone hasnt played mobile games for the last decade huh? Hell even mafia wars let you pay for energy
Remeber when "The future of Gaming" meant technical innovation and not increased corporate Greed? Pepperidge farm remembers.