this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
734 points (98.2% liked)

Comic Strips

12329 readers
2012 users here now

Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.

The rules are simple:

Web of links

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
lawrence@lemmy.world
734
Whales (slrpnk.net)
submitted 10 hours ago by Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net to c/comicstrips@lemmy.world
67 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] glitchdx@lemmy.world 15 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

At this time I'd like to shill for Warframe.

The game is free. The battlepasses are free. The lootboxes are free. The ways you open those lootboxes are also free. The premium currency is a tradable item, so it is 100% viable to get it and buy premium shit without ever spending real money. Digital Extremes (the devs) once accidentally created a gambling machine (for pet cosmetics), and upon discovering what they did, removed it from the game and refunded everyone who spent money on it.

Warframe is the one game that I've spent more money on than any other game, I'm not biased, you're biased.

[–] FinalRemix@lemmy.world 2 points 36 minutes ago

Wait, what was that about the pet cosmetics? I must've been on hiatus when that went down.

[–] Pika@sh.itjust.works 18 points 2 hours ago

The biggest reason of why I struggle to get into any of the subscription-based games, because none of them are only subscription based, they charge you both for the game and the subscription afterward so you have both the price of the game plus any type of expansion packs plus the subscription cost monthly afterward and that's without including any of the microtransactions. I don't know why anyone plays them

[–] Randelung@lemmy.world 4 points 2 hours ago

Acquaintance of mine just dgaf. He'll get banned on a game for cheating and just spend another 60.- to get another copy. DLCs, micro transactions, pay to win, doesn't matter. He's a cancer on the whole industry.

[–] ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net 26 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Remember the Boycott for Call of Duty? And most of them were playing on Day 1.

[–] Martineski@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 2 hours ago

This is so bad that it reminded me of reddit protest that I managed to forget about. xD

[–] Nihilistra@lemmy.world 17 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I'm so happy I don't give a fuck about looking cool or having nice effects in a game.

The only one I ever spend more bucks than I had to is Path of Exile. And the supporter packs give you your whole worth of money spend as premium currency plus you get the usual skins, emotes and tracking tools.

I totally feel that I'm okay with buying functional stuff like inventory space if the system itself feels fair.

In 10 years and around 5000h (only game I play except tarkov for a while) in I spend 122€ so a mount for 90 bucks seems crazy.

[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 2 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

The only time I have ever paid for any kind of MTX was for Tribes: Ascend. I bought the cheapest amount of paid for currency (which was $5) just for the permanent VIP status it conferred, which doubled your XP gain to unlock weapons and shit (back before they completely restructured the game and that wasn't necessary anymore).

I think I ended up using the currency it gave me to buy one of the original Tribes 2 voice sets because it had the most annoying, ear-splitting version of the "Shazbot!" line and I would spam the shit outta it.

Never again. Even if I like the game, like I did with Ascend. I especially won't do it with anything Hi-Rez makes.

[–] helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world 9 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

The problem with this mount (beside the cost in the first place) is it provides exclusive functionality otherwise not available.

It provides portable access to the in game auction house and mailbox.

[–] randon31415@lemmy.world 1 points 46 minutes ago

Don't engineers have a portable AH?

[–] 20hzservers@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

Wow I didn't know that so it's a 90$ cosmetic plus pay to win. Ridiculous.

[–] burgersc12@mander.xyz 22 points 6 hours ago (4 children)

Can't understand people who spend hundreds of dollars on virtual shit they don't even own, just a "licence" to rent it. Like how do you spend that much with almost nothing to show for it.

[–] Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca 6 points 3 hours ago

It's no different than spending thousands on travel or hundreds to watch movies at the theater. You're paying for the experience and entertainment, not something physical.

[–] LePoisson@lemmy.world 9 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

Isn't that literally everyone who owns digital games? All your shit on Steam is a license to use the software, you don't actually own any of those games.

I mean, I get the point, cosmetics and such and anything virtual is not tangible in the real world but let's not pretend we aren't all doing that with every game we spend money on.

Having said that, the amount of money companies charge for some of this stuff is outrageous. Luckily, nobody is pointing a gun to your head forcing you to buy it!

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] Fredselfish@lemmy.world 19 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Me after realizing it's me with American Truck Simulator, buying all those DLC and truck packs.

Was going say your right how stupid, then dawned on me I have done this....😭

[–] daellat@lemmy.world 10 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

The truck packs maybe but most dlc is map expansions which I don't see as equivalent

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] ValenThyme@reddthat.com 6 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

things can only be enjoyed if you trade money for physical objects then?

Cuz my partner has gotten many many hundreds of hours of enjoyment from the few hundred bucks they have 'wasted' on things like Fallout76 furniture and stuff. Eventually she will stop playing and 'lose' all that stuff.

I personally think the many hundred hours of happy playtime is well worth it. It's her favorite way to relax after work. We don't have a lot of space for her to build real castles but she spends sooo much of her time enjoying building virtual ones.

How is it any different from enjoying nice food or drinks with friends?

[–] burgersc12@mander.xyz 3 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

I guess if you are enjoying the act of spending money that's good? But like I'm not spending any extra for cosmetics, that money could be spent on having real experiences instead of some bits on a PC that you'll lose access to within a decade. Paying for DLC and extra content is one thing, but to change the look of virtual space for real cash is insane to me! Personally I have more fun when I don't spend stupid amounts of money, but to each their own. When the game is free to play, or close to it you can have almost the same experience as someone who decides to spend the money.

[–] MonkeyDatabase@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Preach. So many people are fine, in fact, better than fine, paying money for cosmetics. I think p2w games are scum but at least the player gets something from that, whether it be time saved, better gun, or whatever.

Paying for a skin (which is essentially what this mount is) Nahhhhh. I've never spent a dime on either of those, but at least the former has some value imo.

Spending $90 to look cool in a videogame is something people need to get therapy for. But they're still playing on official WoW servers, so we already knew that. (Shoutouts to Whitemane and TurtleWow. Neither costs a cent monthly and both respect your time)

[–] Randomgal@lemmy.ca 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

"Time Saved" is not a real thing though. This would imply there was an unavoidable need to spend that time to begin with, there isn't.

The game is artificial, if something is time consuming it's by design. If you're paying to "save time" in a game, you're being farmed for money, plain and simple. You ain't gaining anything, you're paying to avoid the inconvenience placed there by the people who are selling you a work around for that inconvenience. You're getting fleeced son.

[–] MonkeyDatabase@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

The grind to get those depends on whether the player is being farmed for money. If it feels good to play, and you unlock content at a reasonable rate, that's just called progression, not farming. But if the task is repetitive, unfun, and designed to frustrate players into paying, that's farming.

That's why people shit on EA for BF2. They did the math of the grind and loot boxes, and it came out so something ridiculous, like multiple hundreds of hours to unlock stuff. I used to play R6 Siege and never spent a penny. After a week or so of playing with my friends, we'd have enough in-game currency to buy a new operator. We'd all unlock new characters and try them out. Week after week, it was fun.

Paying, imo would have ruined that experience because the gameplay is what made it fun. Forcing us to use the ops we chose rather than having a full roster to pick whatever we wanted. Felt almost like deck-building. We were progressing, not farming.

The caveat is that the new ops tended to be OP. I think the devs probably do it intentionally. This is the P2W part. People could pay day 1 and get the operator with the overtuned kit. They paid to save time, because they want to be the first to use the shiny new toy.

But again, like I said. I'll never spend money on either, but at least that person paying is gaining something, an advantage, time saved, instant gratification, more time learning the op. The person buying a pink gun gets ... a digital pink gun?

[–] Randomgal@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 hours ago

It seems we disagree on the value of things. For me at least, somebody had to be vaguely creative to create the fucking blue 20$ skin, and the value is not in the non-existent item, but in the very real aesthetic and social experience of owning that skin, a social symbol, like art in your wall. Useless by itself, but it makes you feel things and let's you say something about yourself to strangers.

To me that is understandable. Like buying AirPods instead of cheapo earbuds just because they look cool and you want to look preppy with your friends. (Notice the extra cost is not about the sound or the function of the thing, but a out the social value, which I'd say is still value)

Monetized grind is the exact opposite. You are working to have the privilege of not paying money for the better experience that is already there. People are getting paid to make things WORSE for you, so that you pay money to avoid-displeasure rather than enjoying something new, even if it's literally just enjoying fleeting vanity.

Paying to skip is not saving me time. They are giving me a worse quality product and then making me pay to solve the problem that they have a financial incentive to make worse. This is like thinking you're getting a deal when phone sellers remove the cable from the box. You're are not, you're being given a free problem, that you can pay even more to solve.

[–] Lizardking27@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

You're part of the problem.

[–] chatokun@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 40 minutes ago

That is indeed the joke.

[–] Backlog3231@reddthat.com 25 points 7 hours ago (3 children)

I'm so glad I got clean

[–] Donjuanme@lemmy.world 4 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Dark legacy comics has been my only source for wow.

I played when they "re released" classic, just before they bent over backwards to please China (that was a big reason I stopped, the other was classic wasn't classic, there was so much jank in it that had clearly not been qc'd), now I read about the adventures of the dlcomics cast and that's more than enough for me.

[–] Zorque@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

The entire reason people wanted to play classic was because of the jank.

[–] Donjuanme@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Nah, there were things like floating sign posts, and enemies in places they shouldn't have been.

It was absolutely not the game that was released 22 years ago. Also they said they didn't re-tune the enemies, but everything was easier, so maybe it wasn't re-tuned, but it was differently tuned

[–] kandoh@reddthat.com 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Maybe you're just a better player then you were as a teen

[–] Donjuanme@lemmy.world 1 points 51 minutes ago

Bwahaha, would love if that was the case. Maybe I was more aggressive as a teen? Maybe I pushed harder into areas where I was under leveled? Except I know that isn't the case because I'm much more impatient as a gamer the days. I know that food and water were much more important to have on hand because of how frequently you'd need to rest between mobs I remember reaching the next tier of food and being relieved that I didn't have to wait the entire 20 seconds, sometimes more if I needed 2 rounds of water to fill my mana bar, on the re-release there was barely any down time when grinding the lower levels.

I'm often one to question people's rose tinted glasses, and I'm not upset for anyone to question my memory, but the"classic" release was made (not saying intentionally) easier than the original release (as a day 1 release player, through cataclysm)

[–] Speculater@lemmy.world 14 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I thought I was immune until I got sucked into some game where you battle with teams of players you collect and fight other players. There was some element of sending your titans to mine resources as well, but I forget the name of the game, but spent over $500 in it.

I literally uninstall any game that has gems, emeralds, coins that can be bought to speed things up.

[–] Donjuanme@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

I put 5 dollars into the clash of clans card game, realized they could very easily have had me for more, turned off the game, uninstalled, and never looked back (I don't think I even used the currency I had purchased).

It was a good moment of realization, glad I got out for 5 dollars.

They could've made so much more with all the permissions I'd given them XD

[–] Fredselfish@lemmy.world 3 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Man I want to get clean, but you don't understand they have three more states coming out on American Truck Simulator and I am desperate to travel to them in game.

I mean it's an awesome game and truly don't feel I wasted the money. Except now maybe I have. I have checked the game is not available outside of Steam. You can't buy a physical copy and not have it tied to online. If they decided to not support it or go out business I will lose everything.

Yeah need rethink playing that game.

[–] Backlog3231@reddthat.com 1 points 2 hours ago

I do understand. I used to stay up playing WoW until sunrise. I used to have an in-game alarm set at 2 AM IRL to remind me to go to bed. I ground dailies until I hated them.

From one gamer to another: get out while you can. For one thing, I missed out on a LOT of good games because I was playing WoW. And the expansions are always a tease; the entire xpac and all of your work is going to be useless the very instant the next one drops. More than anything, I didn't like who I was when I played WoW.

I quit something like 5 or 6 years ago I think (sometime during the disaster that was Battle for Azeroth) and boy am I glad I did. Sometimes I miss Azeroth, but that is a relationship that will drain your very soul. Gotta do one more daily. One more dungeon. One more raid. Then I'll have enough widgets to buy the gizmo! And honestly, I was never even that good. Pretty much everything in my life has improved since I quit WoW. Not all of it was because of crippling gaming addiction, of course, but it made every aspect of my life more difficult.

All of the above applies to Elite: Dangerous as well. If you are at the point where you are rethinking your relationship with a game, its long past time to stop playing.

[–] Makeitstop@lemmy.world 106 points 10 hours ago (12 children)

Are the whales the ones complaining? Because the whole concept of a whale is that they are the exception. The vast majority of players pay only the minimum amount or slightly more, but the whales dump so much money in that they are still worth more to the devs than the other 99% of players combined.

[–] chaonaut@lemmy.world 15 points 6 hours ago

You know who look like whales? Problem spenders who spend far beyond their means, and are preyed upon by predatory business practices that use psychological manipulation to encourage people to spend as much as as they can. Like, I've literally watched video game developer conference talks where a dev explains in great detail and depth on how to hijack human psychology to milk every last dollar they can. Whales stopped being "those who can afford to spend" a long time ago.

[–] ladicius@lemmy.world 44 points 10 hours ago (5 children)

You're right. The definition of a whale includes that he has enough money to not complain about any price at all.

Except complaining is his kink... Then he gets double the satisfaction from his payments.

[–] ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.ml 23 points 8 hours ago

A whale doesn't need enough money not to complain. The tactics used to attract whales are meant to build or take advantage of addictions. When I was drinking I would regularly complain about the cost of alcohol yet still spend much more than I could afford on it

[–] wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago

buys shit

violently orgasms

[–] chuckleslord@lemmy.world 9 points 8 hours ago

Whales aren't people who can afford whatever, so they spend whatever. Whales are people invested enough that the perceived value added is more than the money it costs. Most whales, therefore, are regular people who are addicted to the game rather than moneybags who could easily afford it. So yeah, it does smell of victim blaming. We should be calling out the bad business practice, rather than calling out those being victimized by the bad business practice.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (10 replies)
[–] ramble81@lemm.ee 16 points 8 hours ago (3 children)

I want to see them come out with a literal flying whale mount for $999 and see who buys it.

[–] explodicle@sh.itjust.works 1 points 15 minutes ago

In ESO that would be lore-accurate

[–] fishbone@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

NOW I CAN SEE THE WHALES

LOOMING OUT OF THE DARK

gratuitous whale chords https://youtu.be/eg_OyqkITSE?t=269

[–] Deconceptualist@lemm.ee 12 points 7 hours ago

I'm sure that would cause a significant portion of the playerbase to react with angry and hurtful messages. Then poor Blizzard would have no choice but to wipe their tears with their massive new pile of hundred dollar bills.

load more comments
view more: next ›