Horse Armour Did Nothing Wrong

[GamerCat_]

Exactly what it says. There was nothing wrong with Bethesda selling horse armour, this wasn't a part of any serious trend which damaged the experience of gaming, but it's a myth that still persists. Look at me, I'm doing more revisionism.

In this thread I would like to challenge you all to name good games RUINED by MICROTRANSACTIONS, GREED, DLC, etc

I don't think it ever happened. Video games obviously started to decline horrifically around the time of Oblivion, but like every other gaming meme, this was just an easily observable and quantifiable factor that was grabbed onto because it was there. Why is the drunk man looking for his keys under the streetlight? Did he drop them there? No. "But that's where the light is."

The gamer's aversion to business models structured around DLCs, subscriptions, microtransactions, has obviously done far more harm to the industry than good. Trends which are killing beloved studios, brands, and games can be traced back to this. Multiplayer games people enjoy with a stable game-state can't stay alive on the initial buy-in followed by tolerated micro-trickle of income so they create sequel games that don't make sense and aren't justified as games because they need another initial purchase buy in to stay alive. Blood Bowl 2 and Killing Floor 2 could have stayed alive indefinitely if they found a way to monetise their stable playerbases. I loved Blood Bowl 2. I would have paid real money for elaborate customisation bullshit. Let me put horse armour on my skaven. Their next game kind of did do that, but offset by the fact beyond meta-mechanics blood bowl didn't need a sequel, so to make their project seem more justified they fucked with the rules, the visuals, it's a mess of arbitrary re-arrangement. Split the playerbase and killed high production value PC blood bowl.

Poor Nikita Buyanov. The man made the mistake of giving gamers far too much because he believes the memes. You should buy a game once forever at the same price you did in the 90s and that entitles you to indefinite further work on the game too. Awesome. Try running a business on that model with only one product. He is trying to monetise his game further, but in such an awkward, tentative manner because every time he tries to do anything he gets half a million youtube video radicalised psychotics calling him "SCUM" and "GREEDY". I have yet to see proof the man lives in exceptional luxury. I don't think he is taking the money. Purchasable winter-gear is not to pay for his next solid gold Lambo. He's trying to keep the fucking game in production. But in 2010 retards said that games were becoming retarded sterile gaynigger bullshit because you could pay to dress up your horse in Oblivion, so now Nikita has to sell his constantly maintained decade+ product once for indefinite access or he's part of the problem.

People were saying that Baldur's Gate 3 was a breath of fresh air because it's not "greedy", doesn't have "microtransactions". That's such a dumb statement made by some nigger so vapid we don't need to go find them again, nobody serious said that hopefully (I don't remember), but you can roll around the internet and find things like that being said all over the place. Single player RPGs obviously never had a "microtransactions" problem, but in the normalfag collective consciousness "not greedy" has become synonymous with "good" and "not greedy" means the game is purchased in one piece, regardless of context. This is Very Bad for Games.

REAL microtransactions have not been tried yet (in the west). REAL corporate greed profit maximisation has not been tried yet.

Video games if every game was built around microtransactions.

 

[luj1]

In this thread I would like to challenge you all to name good games RUINED by MICROTRANSACTIONS, GREED, DLC, etc

not good games maybe but ruined nonetheless

Diablo Immor(t)al
Destiny 1-2
Fallout 76

btw you have some of the worst takes on the Codex

 

[GamerCat_]

In this thread I would like to challenge you all to name good games RUINED by MICROTRANSACTIONS, GREED, DLC, etc

not good games maybe but ruined nonetheless

Diablo Immor(t)al
Destiny 1-2
Fallout 76

btw you have some of the worst takes on the Codex

Do you believe that these games were aesthetically justified projects and worthwhile in their demands upon your time, aside from these additional purchase elements? Would you play every last season of Destiny from the start if it was just one or two whole game purchases?

Not even getting into the practicality of the entire Destiny production cycle being two 60 dollar purchases, I want to know if you'd actually play these. I did specify "good games".

 

[Tehdagah]

Multiplayer games people enjoy with a stable game-state can't stay alive on the initial buy-in followed by tolerated micro-trickle of income so they create sequel games that don't make sense and aren't justified as games because they need another initial purchase buy in to stay alive. Blood Bowl 2 and Killing Floor 2 could have stayed alive indefinitely if they found a way to monetise their stable playerbases.

Fortnite did this and it worked.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Online games with built-in shops, "seasons", etc., are just eldritch horrors. No sane human plays them.

That said, there was a lot of butt-hurt about this horse costume DLC, rightly so, but at least Bethesda still makes single player games that don't have this kind of mandatory online bullshits, compared to the majority of AAA developers.

 

[Modron]

Blood Bowl 2 and Killing Floor 2 could have stayed alive indefinitely if they found a way to monetise their stable playerbases. I loved Blood Bowl 2. I would have paid real money for elaborate customisation bullshit.

Cyanide made a not blood bowl game got sued by Games Workshop and as part of the settlement they had to make 3 BB games with GW taking the lion's share of the base sales hence all the nickle and diming they did with the dlc to scrape out a meagre profit.

 

[destinae vomitus]

Horse Armor dindu nuffin, the Bethesda Creation Club is completely incidental and not at all a direct byproduct. Studios making money off of hot air is a good thing, it obviously equates into better games being made.

Valve for one went from making actual games to maintaining glorified gambling platforms after they introduced microtransactions to Team Fortress 2. In many ways it was the patient zero of almost everything wrong with online games these days thanks to how it helped pave the way for the modern "live service" model. The other obvious suspect would be World of Warcraft, an already thoroughly monetized game with its subscription fee and later bi-annual expansions that'd deprecate old content, that then showcased to the world that you can get away with fleecing players for utterly trivial services like changing a character's name and add cosmetic microtransactions on top of all that (the first one being a shiny sparkly horse, how novel). Did that improve the output of free content updates or even improve the quality of the game in any sense? No, it helped Bobby Kotick afford yet more yachts.

 

[Gregz]

Monetizing this hobby through 'creative' means has been cancer.

A game should ship for a fixed price, and an MMO should charge a fixed monthly fee. That's it.

 

[GamerCat_]

Multiplayer games people enjoy with a stable game-state can't stay alive on the initial buy-in followed by tolerated micro-trickle of income so they create sequel games that don't make sense and aren't justified as games because they need another initial purchase buy in to stay alive. Blood Bowl 2 and Killing Floor 2 could have stayed alive indefinitely if they found a way to monetise their stable playerbases.

Fortnite did this and it worked.

Yes Fortnite was kind of a happy accident maybe but it turned into a very sane and functional business model as far as I can tell.

Online games with built-in shops, "seasons", etc., are just eldritch horrors. No sane human plays them.

THIS is an important point I wanted to get at. That games actually made to run long term, built with that specific business model in mind, tend to be a different class of experience to what we traditionally recognise as 'Video Games', and we need better language to work around this. Imagine if we used the same term for cinema, tv, and tiktok. That's about where gaming is at. Even then, these don't have to be as ugly as they tend to be. The chinkmaxxed versions of these are often very pretty. And the Japanese of course.

You could say they're still horrors conceptually, these endlessly expanding black hole works that just exist to cynically hold your attention forever, but let's be real that's how most people engage with the world and what they want. Appreciating individual old games as limited and complete expressive and experimental works is beyond most people. The average person playing games made before the biden presidency might as well be playing some kind of seasonshit since it's all just a succession of flashing lights and timesink makework to them.

That said, there was a lot of butt-hurt about this horse costume DLC, rightly so, but at least Bethesda still makes single player games that don't have this kind of mandatory online bullshits, compared to the majority of AAA developers.

Bethesda kind of being established as an institution by Skyrim gives them a lot of leeway. Tell the masses a new Skyrimvaniabornelike is out and a lot of illiterate mexicans will just reflexively give them money. Though the way they fucked up Starfield may have them back under pressure. We'll see what happens next.

Horse Armor dindu nuffin, the Bethesda Creation Club is completely incidental and not at all a direct byproduct.

In theory I like the Creation Club even. If it were run by less retarded people it would be great. Making AAA professional games modular, and encouraging people to work their way in from below by making cool stuff is a fantastic idea. Modding used to be a great pathway into actually working on games. Modding being a mutually profitable endeavour for modders and primary developers is a really cool idea. Incentivises them both to do their best. Or at least could. Many games have odd relationships with semi-integrated modders now. 343 Studios working with the Cursed Halo guy. The Assetto Corsa devs basically letting their primary modder work for them but have his salary covered by Patreon. This model is trying to emerge all around us.

Studios making money off of hot air is a good thing

Horse armor was a model/skin they made which they put into their game, which they also made. But if ill gotten gains upset you, let me tell you about these people called The Jews...

, it obviously equates into better games being made.

The best industry in the world remains Japan, which has no neurotic aversion to novel payment models, and in fact embraces them.

Valve for one went from making actual games to maintaining glorified gambling platforms after they introduced microtransactions to Team Fortress 2.

TF2 was a finished game a long time ago. Hats were a neat way to keep it more interesting for the deeply invested long term, and a way to make it self-maintaining.

Valve still make games. But if you're talking about their freedom to coast on passive income, that's far more due to the fact they own steam, WHICH THEY MADE BY THE WAY.

I left a big comment under a youtube video about this and the guy who challenged me asserting that Valve were in fact GREEDY SCUM turned out to be a genuine schizophrenic. Just a weird episode that sticks in my mind in relation to this issue. A guy with a youtube channel where he vlogs about being gangstalked went out of his way to challenge me on the integrity of Valve. Other people can attest to this having happened.

In many ways it was the patient zero of almost everything wrong with online games these days thanks to how it helped pave the way for the modern "live service" model.

What did Live Service ruin?

The other obvious suspect would be World of Warcraft, an already thoroughly monetized game with its subscription fee and later bi-annual expansions that'd deprecate old content, that then showcased to the world that you can get away with fleecing players for utterly trivial services like changing a character's name and add cosmetic microtransactions on top of all that (the first one being a shiny sparkly horse, how novel). Did that improve the output of free content updates or even improve the quality of the game in any sense? No, it helped Bobby Kotick afford yet more yachts.

I think wow is vomitively ugly so I've never played it, but it seems to me like it does a lot right. It's content to keep its tech at a low functional level and build on its own foundations indefinitely. A more retarded dev would have decided that by 2012 GRAPHICS had gotten so good that they couldn't justify NOT making WoW2, with bleeding edge muddy obamagraphics. Making everything people had invested in WoW1 outdated junk, splitting their own playerbase, creating new tech requirements, etc.

Just working on one game forever and making it constantly pay for itself and pay out major profits is great. And point I make for Valve is true of Blizzard too, they make more stuff with their income. Now, what they make is hideous dogshit. I have never played Overwatch because it looks disgusting. I strongly dislike Starcraft 2 on nearly all levels. But money in goes somewhere at the very least.

Big neurotic ticking point with gamers is generalised outrage at the idea of anything making money ever. All people making video games should be on the most razor thin viability margins living like it's the great depression so as to keep themselves pure. Perhaps this is related to the "soul" factor that dumbass brought up in the other thread. Spiritual goodness is impracticality and pointless suffering. Explains why libtards all want to nuke Japan again for moralistic reasons.

 

[GamerCat_]

Monetizing this hobby through 'creative' means has been cancer.

A game should ship for a fixed price, and an MMO should charge a fixed monthly fee. That's it.

But a game is a game is a game, Greg. Should a fixed price mean a fixed level of production? People often want their games to keep going. I don't. I like things to be nice and finished and complete. But I'm not everyone.

 

[Gregz]

Monetizing this hobby through 'creative' means has been cancer.

A game should ship for a fixed price, and an MMO should charge a fixed monthly fee. That's it.

But a game is a game is a game, Greg. Should a fixed price mean a fixed level of production? People often want their games to keep going. I don't. I like things to be nice and finished and complete. But I'm not everyone.

Modding solves the remaining questions.

 

[GamerCat_]

Monetizing this hobby through 'creative' means has been cancer.

A game should ship for a fixed price, and an MMO should charge a fixed monthly fee. That's it.

But a game is a game is a game, Greg. Should a fixed price mean a fixed level of production? People often want their games to keep going. I don't. I like things to be nice and finished and complete. But I'm not everyone.

Modding solves the remaining questions.

For a game like say, Vermintide, or Deep Rock Galactic?

It's not 2002 you oomerwoomerjoomer.

 

[Ritz]

The problem with games in the wake of Oblivion isn't that they're made by teams of thousands that never interact with each other, that are split across 5 continents and that have no coherent vision on what they want to make. It's the freaking microtransactions.

 

[HansDampf]

In this thread I would like to challenge you all to name good games RUINED by MICROTRANSACTIONS, GREED, DLC, etc

All of them. MTX always have a negative impact on the quality of a game. This doesn't mean that every game without MTX is automatically better than every game with MTX.

Name one game that is improved by MTX.

 

[Infinitron]

As I've said before, woke SJWs and anti-woke grognards can both be seen as responses to the corporate vulgarization of the videogame industry during the 2000s.

Both sides saw the horse armor, bloom effects, endless brown/gray military shooters, etc, and realized they were awful.

Their solutions to these problems were of course very different.

But both sides were, to some extent, an attempt to effect an elitist takeover of game development, to the exclusion of vulgar mass audiences. SJWs with their trannies and pronouns, grognards with their turn-based combat. Remarkably, both sides have achieved success!

So GamerCat_ is correct that if you want to see what the populist masses really want, look at multiplayer gacha games. That's how game development truly aimed at "audience engagement" looks like. Single player game development is controlled by ideologues, of one stripe or another.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Yeah, nice opinion you have there.

Now tell us why aren't you banning accounts spamming the boards with LLM drivel?

 

[Machocruz]

When it comes to the game itself, horse armor was a nothingburger. Easily ignorable, there is nothing egregious about selling an extra that is not mandatory for progressing in or casually enjoying the game; let fools part with their money once again. I'm now convinced that the ballyhoo around it was merely a trojan horse to criticize a game and company that people knew deserved criticism but didn't want to slam the game or company directly because the prevailing bandwagon narrative was that Oblivion Is A Masterpiece and Besthesgods. The first mainstream review I read for the game basically established, in my mind, ground zero for the media grifting and shilling that was to come that generation, but that's another topic.

 

[tommy heavenly6]

Now tell us why aren't you banning accounts spamming the boards with LLM drivel?

I find it funny that this board which takes pride in placing the most verbose RPGs known to men as the example of everything a RPG should strive for, is scared of words and cowers in fear the moment their users have to read more than two paragraphs in forum post format. Maybe GamerCat_ should present his posts as doctored reddit screencaps, people always pay attention to those for some reason despite being actual LLM drivel that are just r/thathappened tier.

 

[GamerCat_]

In this thread I would like to challenge you all to name good games RUINED by MICROTRANSACTIONS, GREED, DLC, etc

Name one game that is improved by MTX.

Resident Evil 5. Yes, the fact I'm paying for rather than merely unlocking the ability to dress the characters this stupidly DOES make it funnier.

As I've said before, woke SJWs and anti-woke grognards can both be seen as responses to the corporate vulgarization of the videogame industry during the 2000s. Both sides saw the horse armor, bloom effects, endless brown/gray military shooters, etc, and realized they were awful. Their solutions to these problems were of course very different. But both sides were, to some extent, an attempt to effect an elitist takeover of game development, to the exclusion of vulgar mass audiences. SJWs with their trannies and pronouns, grognards with their turn-based combat. Remarkably, both sides have achieved success!

Two wolves inside The Gaming Community.

Crunchy weapon sandboxes in which YOU CAN CARRY EVERY GUN (No more HALOKID SLOP) and lo-fi chillhop beats to hopepunk your penis off to. Everyone gets big acclaimed works containing what they want. Goodgamedesign theory, and blatant left ideology serving in the place of any kind of personal character (it's complicated, it is an accurate reflection of what the creator is into... after leftism hollowed him out, took his penis, and occupied the void where his soul used to be).

But GamerCat_ is correct that if you want to see what the populist masses really want, look at multiplayer gacha games. That's how game development truly aimed at "audience engagement" looks like. Single player game development is controlled by ideologues, of one stripe or another.

Yes, it really is that simple. Important point many may disagree with me on is that 99% of people who think they're talking about abstract and impersonal science or engineering, like anybody who says "game design", is also an ideologue. The fact they're so far from awareness of this may make them the worse ones.

 

[PrK]

The gamer's aversion to business models structured around DLCs, subscriptions, microtransactions, has obviously done far more harm to the industry than good.

The gamer's aversion to business models structured around DLCs, subscriptions, microtransactions is, in fact, the only sane emotional response to that type of cancer.
Any and all attempts to nickel and dime the player should be resisted by 1. not giving a cent to such compromised products and also pirating where applicable and 2. shaming any such disgusting troglodyte devs/publishers and the humongous cuck consumers who enable them. No exceptions.

 

[Necrensha]

1.Prince of Persia(2008) AND Asura's Wrath both sold their fucking ENDING separately.
2.Persona 3 has:
-The original version
-The FES version
-The PSP version
-The remake
All of which have different stuff not shared between them, buy the same fucking game over and over again if you want to hear the entire story!
3.Mass Effect 3, piece of garbage, had the prothean guy as fucking DLC when he should be a major character.
4.Evolve came out with over 60$ worth of DLC on day ONE.
5.Destiny 2 one day decided that their game was *too big* so they started deleting previous expansions and zones from the game, permanently, even if you payed hundreds of dollars for all of that.

I don't give a shit about corporate profits, fuck the videogame industry.

 

[Sergio]

In this thread I would like to challenge you all to name good games RUINED by MICROTRANSACTIONS, GREED, DLC, etc

not good games maybe but ruined nonetheless

Diablo Immor(t)al
Destiny 1-2
Fallout 76

btw you have some of the worst takes on the Codex

Do you believe that these games were aesthetically justified projects and worthwhile in their demands upon your time, aside from these additional purchase elements? Would you play every last season of Destiny from the start if it was just one or two whole game purchases?

Not even getting into the practicality of the entire Destiny production cycle being two 60 dollar purchases, I want to know if you'd actually play these. I did specify "good games".

Actually good games (or rather, they either WERE good before being monetized to hell and back or WOULD be if not for greedy publishers): FIFA series (NBA2K too). Gran Turismo 7. Overwatch 2. Europa Universalis 4. Fucking Plants vs Zombies!

People who defend this slop is the reason why it's so widespread. Shameful.

 

[markec]

Exactly what it says. There was nothing wrong with Bethesda selling horse armour, this wasn't a part of any serious trend which damaged the experience of gaming, but it's a myth that still persists. Look at me, I'm doing more revisionism.

In general there is nothing wrong for a company to sell small cosmetic DLC, they arent mandatory for gameplay, especially in a game that allows modding. Horse armor DLC has such a bad reputation because its seen as something that popularized such practices and overall meager content for the price tag. I would say that I would consider this to be wrong if something like that armor or even worse some game mechanic was originally intended to be part of the game but cut and later sold separately. Also big issue is when microtransaction are used to give unfair advantage to players.

In this thread I would like to challenge you all to name good games RUINED by MICROTRANSACTIONS, GREED, DLC, etc

I don't think it ever happened. Video games obviously started to decline horrifically around the time of Oblivion, but like every other gaming meme, this was just an easily observable and quantifiable factor that was grabbed onto because it was there. Why is the drunk man looking for his keys under the streetlight? Did he drop them there? No. "But that's where the light is."

Off top of the head ArcheAge Online, Blacklight Retribution, Tribes: Vengeance. All good games that got ruined because they went pay to win via microtransactions. Also Paradox and EA games that milk countless DLC making getting into the game late impossible unless you pay a lot of money.

The gamer's aversion to business models structured around DLCs, subscriptions, microtransactions, has obviously done far more harm to the industry than good. Trends which are killing beloved studios, brands, and games can be traced back to this. Multiplayer games people enjoy with a stable game-state can't stay alive on the initial buy-in followed by tolerated micro-trickle of income so they create sequel games that don't make sense and aren't justified as games because they need another initial purchase buy in to stay alive. Blood Bowl 2 and Killing Floor 2 could have stayed alive indefinitely if they found a way to monetise their stable playerbases. I loved Blood Bowl 2. I would have paid real money for elaborate customisation bullshit. Let me put horse armour on my skaven. Their next game kind of did do that, but offset by the fact beyond meta-mechanics blood bowl didn't need a sequel, so to make their project seem more justified they fucked with the rules, the visuals, it's a mess of arbitrary re-arrangement. Split the playerbase and killed high production value PC blood bowl.

Poor Nikita Buyanov. The man made the mistake of giving gamers far too much because he believes the memes. You should buy a game once forever at the same price you did in the 90s and that entitles you to indefinite further work on the game too. Awesome. Try running a business on that model with only one product. He is trying to monetise his game further, but in such an awkward, tentative manner because every time he tries to do anything he gets half a million youtube video radicalised psychotics calling him "SCUM" and "GREEDY". I have yet to see proof the man lives in exceptional luxury. I don't think he is taking the money. Purchasable winter-gear is not to pay for his next solid gold Lambo. He's trying to keep the fucking game in production. But in 2010 retards said that games were becoming retarded sterile gaynigger bullshit because you could pay to dress up your horse in Oblivion, so now Nikita has to sell his constantly maintained decade+ product once for indefinite access or he's part of the problem.

People were saying that Baldur's Gate 3 was a breath of fresh air because it's not "greedy", doesn't have "microtransactions". That's such a dumb statement made by some nigger so vapid we don't need to go find them again, nobody serious said that hopefully (I don't remember), but you can roll around the internet and find things like that being said all over the place. Single player RPGs obviously never had a "microtransactions" problem, but in the normalfag collective consciousness "not greedy" has become synonymous with "good" and "not greedy" means the game is purchased in one piece, regardless of context. This is Very Bad for Games.

REAL microtransactions have not been tried yet (in the west). REAL corporate greed profit maximisation has not been tried yet.

Video games if every game was built around microtransactions.

As said I have nothing against microtransactions or DLC if they are purely cosmetic or add meaningful content for a fair price. The issue is that they are often overpriced and not give enough of a value for that price, give advantage in multiplayer games, lots of expensive content DLC makes it difficult for beginners to start playing a game and gacha games like you mention give very low chance of getting best stuff. All of this can be easily solved, even Paradox games can make their DLC cheaper every years and few years old DLC completely free. But as long they can make money they will not change their ways and greed of the developers should not be defended.

 

[Sergio]

I don't give a shit about corporate profits, fuck the videogame industry.

It would be justified if these profits went to the ACTUAL DEVS, but no, they just make useless execs rich.

 

[Necrensha]

I don't give a shit about corporate profits, fuck the videogame industry.

It would be justified if these profits went to the ACTUAL DEVS, but no, they just make useless execs rich.

And most devs have completely given up on videogames since all of them get fired the second development is finished. Too many fucking times we've all read some news about ''RECORD PROFITS!'' followed by half of the studio being disbanded.
Nobody of any talent is gonna bother joining this shitfest. So the only people left are the rejects and those who have more passion than wisdom.