Pay-To-Win Beats Out Multiplayer

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It's pretty sad that game developers are starting to ditch multiplayer in favor of pay-to-win.

The reason that we went singleplayer…well, originally, we were thinking about having a multiplayer option, but because we’re going with a pay-to-win model, we were worried that by having online multiplayer, for all the new users that would be coming in experiencing the game for the first time, they might be immediately deterred by fighting against opponents who had superior equipment and gear—and we didn’t want to have that kind of negative impact on new players.
 
Well it's free, so the idea is to not discourage players. The more they play, the more likely they'll pay. Modern games are all about "everyone wins" mentality. A lot of players tend to find multiplayer experience to be very different then single player, since most games make it so easy to win. You beat a game very easily and then think you're so good that you wanna try owning people in multiplayer. But that is never the case. Once you step into a multiplayer game, you'll find yourself getting utterly destroyed.

This is mostly the developers fault, as the game never had enough depth in the difficulty to prepare players for multiplayer. SoulCalibur is a multiplayer experience, which means it's best played against humans. The only appeal I can see for SoulCalibur is looking at unrealistically sexy women with large boobs. That appeal only lasts as long as I can keep my hands on the controls, and not in my pants.
 
Ah the old days when you purchased a game with all it's content was available on day one, you did not have to rank up or unlock weapons, you could run your own server, you could set you own map list and the community would create great/awesome content longer then the game was supported by the devs/publishers.....
 
Ah the old days when you purchased a game with all it's content was available on day one, you did not have to rank up or unlock weapons, you could run your own server, you could set you own map list and the community would create great/awesome content longer then the game was supported by the devs/publishers.....

On PC. Console games tend not to be moddable, and the title being discussed appears to be a console title.
 
Ah the old days when you purchased a game with all it's content was available on day one, you did not have to rank up or unlock weapons, you could run your own server, you could set you own map list and the community would create great/awesome content longer then the game was supported by the devs/publishers.....



Ahh the days when we had Expansion Packs for a reasonable price with actual CONTENT and not some money grubbing DLC with weapon and character skins sold for almost the same price.
 
Pay to win in a "Single" player....

Fuck That.


I would rather pay for a complete game. Yet another money grab on the list of games I'll never buy.
 
Pay to win is fail on so many levels. I will also fail to pay money for this game. Bandai Namco will likely not win with the pay they will get. Leaving out multiplayer on a arcade fighting game is worse than shooting yourself in the foot. You may have just shot your junk off.

On a side note, I had no interest in this game prior to this article and likely would have never bought either way.
 
On PC. Console games tend not to be moddable, and the title being discussed appears to be a console title.

Not quite... i remember buying games and having access to the WHOLE DAMN GAME on day one.


Just look at the DLC crap that's taken over all gaming. Pay 60-70 dollars for a disc, but the content on it won't be unlocked for another month AND you have to fork over another 15 dollars.

Everyone has their limits and any game that goes this route can S an entire bag of D's

If a game is good... REALLY good, for 60 dollars I expect to have access to the full thing. Multiplayer included.

On a slight tangent the thing that sucks even more about the overall trend of gaming these days, we are starting to see older games having their online systems shutting down. (C&C was the most recent news in this category) Any centralized system is going to suffer from this... going to be fun years down the line watching everyone lose access to clound based systems. Single point of control, catastrophic failure.
 
Ahh the days when we had Expansion Packs for a reasonable price with actual CONTENT and not some money grubbing DLC with weapon and character skins sold for almost the same price.

The problem is not the developers fault really, it's the fact that people are willing to pay for it. The simple fact is, if it wasn't profitable, devs wouldn't do it to begin with.

In essence, thank your idiot friends for paying $10 for a skin and a few weapons. They are the reason it's become mainstream.
 
Limited dev resources man! They have to concentrate on making the boobies jiggle just right and producing revealing DLC outfits!
 
I remember the good ol' days where if you died enough, the game said F-U and you had to start from the beginning.

This current generation of people wants everything to be easier.
 
Well it's free, so the idea is to not discourage players.
The idea is very simple.

They intentionally design games so that you have rapid initial development and get hooked, but with a "investment" system in which you earn XP or upgrades or something that makes the player feel like they have something of value invested into the game.

Once the player has been playing for a while, that advancement rate is progressively brought to a standstill, and other pay-to-win features are often brought into play at this higher level that make it difficult to even MAINTAIN what you have without paying (due to say repair costs of your vehicle), or that start reach such a level of competition that you can no longer stay competative without buying say premium ammunition and the like which gives you an advantage.

They know that people generally like to win at LEAST 50% of the time to enjoy themselves, and many are willing to shell out big money to have an unfair advantage compared to their peers.

This is an absolutely frustrating business model for the player, where they get sucked in for nothing, but in the end spend $200-500 over the life of the game versus the traditional model of paying a one time $40 fee for the game.
 
The problem is not the developers fault really, it's the fact that people are willing to pay for it. The simple fact is, if it wasn't profitable, devs wouldn't do it to begin with.

In essence, thank your idiot friends for paying $10 for a skin and a few weapons. They are the reason it's become mainstream.
That's certainly true, but basically the devs are saying that they will let you CHEAT if you pay them.

There are always cheaters in games, and then there are people that feel like they have to at least level the playing field and thus pay in as well. But then you have people for whome money isn't an object or they are simply VERY competative and have a very strong drive to win at any cost (like athletes that take steroids or douchebags that have to have the last word) and will always outspend others.

This makes the devs very happy, but it ultimately preys on gamers with personality issues the same as casinos do, and the public at large suffers for it feeling frustrated and cheated since there isn't a level playing field. I don't mind being pwned for example, but if some noobtard kills me because he gave the devs $50 for an unfair advantage, that makes me rage.

Its why I rage-quit World of Tanks even though I have tons of top tier tanks.
 
heh, even fighting games are pay2win now.

I blame the users who eat shit like this. They are ruining it for everyone else. That said, I like to see some stats showing which demographic is supporting this model. Most likely the vast majority is not located in the old lands.
 
I wouldn't lose any sleep over dev ditching multiplayer, we have plenty of multiplayer games. I would love to see more single player games.

That said, paying to win a single player game sounds retarded.
 
I wouldn't lose any sleep over dev ditching multiplayer, we have plenty of multiplayer games. I would love to see more single player games.

That said, paying to win a single player game sounds retarded.

But not uncommon really. This didn't start with them in particular. I would argue this kind of behavior goes as far back as the days of cheat lines, during the golden age of gaming.

It's really not much different these days, rather instead of paying for hints/solutions over the phone, you're paying for overpowered DLC items on Steam or other platforms.
 
Ah the old days when you purchased a game with all it's content was available on day one, you did not have to rank up or unlock weapons, you could run your own server, you could set you own map list and the community would create great/awesome content longer then the game was supported by the devs/publishers.....

The good old days, now it's shite.
 
The good old days, now it's shite.

Corporate GREED is the reason on why it went to shite. Greed and nothing more has turned the good ol days to the how much money can I sucker off these sheep players.
 
I kind of think this will be a massive failure. People want to pay 2 win because they want to beat or troll other gamers. I just don't think the same motivation will exist in a single player only game.
 
Meh, 6/one half. Plenty of other games to play. Thanks for letting me know not to bother buying this one though. Appreciate the heads up!
 
Dont worry about this crap. Its total bullshit. In the times we live in with our internet people actually want social games aka multiplayer. So even if they think its a good idea they wont have a choice but give us what we want in the end. you know, the end when your wallet runs out of money and you wonder what went wrong with your boringly lonely gaming experience.
 
So, wait, a franchise famous for its fun multiplayer fighting game, going free to play and single player and they are expecting it to be successful. Someone fire whoever came up with this idea, sterilize them, lobotomize and burn any journals they have so their ideas will never spread.
 
What suck is, now that they released the Single Player Pay to Win genie, this will be the standard model in 5 years.

Even single player games will nickle and dime you into oblivion.

I can see TES VII coming out in 2019 with two vendor types in Tamriel.. Ones that sell garbage for in game Septims.. Or you can go to the vendor with good stuff, and whip out a credit card and pay real cash! And of course you can't play offline anymore because it'll require logging into a single player server that runs the game so you can't hack it.

The future is going to suck.
 
No the standard model in 5 years will be one where you pay for the game like BF4 and you have a premium status and their are more things that are P2W on top of that.
 
This is an absolutely frustrating business model for the player, where they get sucked in for nothing, but in the end spend $200-500 over the life of the game versus the traditional model of paying a one time $40 fee for the game.

I find this an interesting issue. I find Blizzard is the easiest example for what has happened to the majority of the industry, but on the other hand. Inflation should have pushed game prices up and experience is most players will not pay 80-100 for a game.
 
Inflation should not have done anything to prices because the volume of customers has exploded. In the early 2000s selling a couple hundred thousand copies of a PC game was a huge success. Now days it's millions. The same is true for operating systems and so on. The customer base is so much bigger now that it easily out runs inflation. Volume and cheap supplies are also so much better.
 
Inflation should not have done anything to prices because the volume of customers has exploded. In the early 2000s selling a couple hundred thousand copies of a PC game was a huge success. Now days it's millions. The same is true for operating systems and so on. The customer base is so much bigger now that it easily out runs inflation. Volume and cheap supplies are also so much better.

US sales has not grown that much from 2000.(looking at the total market and looking at it via TVM) You also have to consider they changed how they record data.

The Sims for example sold 16 million copies in 2000. Further back Riven Sold 4.5 million. While a modern hit like minecraft sold 15 million. In recent year the market is showing signs of reasonable decline. I am not pro the insane dlc/f2p models and think they are making a mistake, but if you look at a games from Blizzard they are making more money with this approach. I think it is a short term pov, but to say that games have gone from 100000 copies to millions being a measure of a hit, is simply untrue.
 
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