How much would you pay for a pet?

  • @tre-oni said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @troubled-cells said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @tre-oni said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @troubled-cells said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @tre-oni said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @troubled-cells said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    Personally i refuse to pay for them.

    I feel it opens the door to all sorts.

    whatever next emotes, vaulted cosmetics or god forbid loot boxes?

    call me old fashioned but i instead believe that if you keep improving your game and adding decent content you can translate that in to sales of your game with the correct marketing and exposure.

    it worked a treat for shrouded spoils.

    Except.. selling a game for a one off price, and then still having those people buy more things they like, while improving the game, translating to more new sales, and again more potential micropurchases is still way more money made for long term improvements than single sales, and waiting around for something to stick, and more people to buy your game.

    The beautiful thing about option 1.. you don't actually have to purchase anything yourself.

    No, but let's be honest, microtransactions ruin In game economies, shadow of war, mortal Kombat x, halo 5, call of duty, battlefront 2 and even the upcoming anthem.

    Being real here.. SoT doesn't exactly have an economy or "meta" to break by selling cosmetic pets.

    Because they don't currently exist, but there would be once introduced.

    To which I'll refer you to my original point, it opens the door for many more.

    I don't believe for one moment these MTX's would be exclusive to pets In the long run, it would be naive to think they are.

    Whats your point? Other than simply being vehemently against it?

    No. There wouldn't suddenly be some meta, or economic destruction because people who wanted to buy cosmetics decided to do so.

    Maybe not exclusively pets, but exclusively cosmetics.. which pets fall under in this instance with how they're intended to be implemented..

    So again.. aside from being obviously against optional cosmetic purchases where is your point?

    "It opens the door for many more"

    Yet you don't see Overwatch for example selling EXP boost, or a Reaper skin with a +immunity to rocket damage.. granted, being rng based it doesn't change that everything they've ever sold was still just cosmetic lootboxes. And they make plenty of money doing so, yet still haven't crossed the alleged inevitable "gateway" selling boost and buffs per match.

    Ah if I had a dime for everytime a person made the "player choice" and "it's just cosmetic" arguement lol

    Overwatch based it's economy on loot boxes with odds being lower on higher tier rewards in the hopes of pushing the player to buy loot box packs. They even use the time old " fear of missing out" tactic with "seasonal" items that are time limited to push purchases of loot box packs. Who else uses time limited cosmetics ?

    Thanks for using a example, that just reaffirms my suspicions.

    We can agree to disagree, but rare definitely ain't going out of business and ceasing development if MTX's aren't added, like some people would try to imply.

  • This is Coming from a player who besides this game had only ever played the call of duty franchises and bought every bad dlc they released (never bought a single lootbox in my life) I'm refreshed to play a game like this were every update is free and I've more than got my moneys worth from this game so far, so I'm willing to pay whatever price they're asking for, one because I want them and two to support the game

  • @ufc-wolverin3 said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    This is Coming from a player who besides this game had only ever played the call of duty franchises and bought every bad dlc they released (never bought a single lootbox in my life) I'm refreshed to play a game like this were every update is free and I've more than got my moneys worth from this game so far, so I'm willing to pay whatever price they're asking for, one because I want them and two to support the game

    Do you not think that every update was free for a reason though ?

  • @troubled-cells said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @tre-oni said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @troubled-cells said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @tre-oni said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @troubled-cells said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @tre-oni said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @troubled-cells said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    Personally i refuse to pay for them.

    I feel it opens the door to all sorts.

    whatever next emotes, vaulted cosmetics or god forbid loot boxes?

    call me old fashioned but i instead believe that if you keep improving your game and adding decent content you can translate that in to sales of your game with the correct marketing and exposure.

    it worked a treat for shrouded spoils.

    Except.. selling a game for a one off price, and then still having those people buy more things they like, while improving the game, translating to more new sales, and again more potential micropurchases is still way more money made for long term improvements than single sales, and waiting around for something to stick, and more people to buy your game.

    The beautiful thing about option 1.. you don't actually have to purchase anything yourself.

    No, but let's be honest, microtransactions ruin In game economies, shadow of war, mortal Kombat x, halo 5, call of duty, battlefront 2 and even the upcoming anthem.

    Being real here.. SoT doesn't exactly have an economy or "meta" to break by selling cosmetic pets.

    Because they don't currently exist, but there would be once introduced.

    To which I'll refer you to my original point, it opens the door for many more.

    I don't believe for one moment these MTX's would be exclusive to pets In the long run, it would be naive to think they are.

    Whats your point? Other than simply being vehemently against it?

    No. There wouldn't suddenly be some meta, or economic destruction because people who wanted to buy cosmetics decided to do so.

    Maybe not exclusively pets, but exclusively cosmetics.. which pets fall under in this instance with how they're intended to be implemented..

    So again.. aside from being obviously against optional cosmetic purchases where is your point?

    "It opens the door for many more"

    Yet you don't see Overwatch for example selling EXP boost, or a Reaper skin with a +immunity to rocket damage.. granted, being rng based it doesn't change that everything they've ever sold was still just cosmetic lootboxes. And they make plenty of money doing so, yet still haven't crossed the alleged inevitable "gateway" selling boost and buffs per match.

    Ah if I had a dime for everytime a person made the "player choice" and "it's just cosmetic" arguement lol

    Overwatch based it's economy on loot boxes with odds being lower on higher tier rewards in the hopes of pushing the player to buy loot box packs. They even use the time old " fear of missing out" tactic with "seasonal" items that are time limited to push purchases of loot box packs. Who else uses time limited cosmetics ?

    Thanks for using a example, that just reaffirms my suspicions.

    We can agree to disagree, but rare definitely ain't going out of business and ceasing development if MTX's aren't added, like some people would try to imply.

    Rare ain't going out of business, but Rare almost certainly will cease development on the game if they can't financially justify ongoing development of free content expansions to Microsoft, and the dozens of people working on it.

    They've already committed to keeping "core" content free, so as not to fragment the userbase... which leaves you with non-essential DLC, like cosmetics or pets.

    "It's just cosmetic" holds water just fine as an argument, depending on the context in which it's being deployed. No matter what Jim Sterling thinks about it.

  • As for the OP's question, I'd pay $5 for a pet. I'd MAYBE consider a little more for some sort of "deluxe pet", but $15? $20? Yeah, no, haha. And they need to be very careful about going overboard with selling cosmetics in general.

    I appreciate the work they put into the game the past year, but it's also pretty hard to argue that the game wasn't kinda thin on stuff to do at launch, despite charging full "AAA" price for the game.

    They've fostered a lot of goodwill among the community in the past year, and they need to be careful not to sour it.

  • @shakes-mcqueen said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @troubled-cells said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @tre-oni said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @troubled-cells said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @tre-oni said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @troubled-cells said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @tre-oni said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @troubled-cells said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    Personally i refuse to pay for them.

    I feel it opens the door to all sorts.

    whatever next emotes, vaulted cosmetics or god forbid loot boxes?

    call me old fashioned but i instead believe that if you keep improving your game and adding decent content you can translate that in to sales of your game with the correct marketing and exposure.

    it worked a treat for shrouded spoils.

    Except.. selling a game for a one off price, and then still having those people buy more things they like, while improving the game, translating to more new sales, and again more potential micropurchases is still way more money made for long term improvements than single sales, and waiting around for something to stick, and more people to buy your game.

    The beautiful thing about option 1.. you don't actually have to purchase anything yourself.

    No, but let's be honest, microtransactions ruin In game economies, shadow of war, mortal Kombat x, halo 5, call of duty, battlefront 2 and even the upcoming anthem.

    Being real here.. SoT doesn't exactly have an economy or "meta" to break by selling cosmetic pets.

    Because they don't currently exist, but there would be once introduced.

    To which I'll refer you to my original point, it opens the door for many more.

    I don't believe for one moment these MTX's would be exclusive to pets In the long run, it would be naive to think they are.

    Whats your point? Other than simply being vehemently against it?

    No. There wouldn't suddenly be some meta, or economic destruction because people who wanted to buy cosmetics decided to do so.

    Maybe not exclusively pets, but exclusively cosmetics.. which pets fall under in this instance with how they're intended to be implemented..

    So again.. aside from being obviously against optional cosmetic purchases where is your point?

    "It opens the door for many more"

    Yet you don't see Overwatch for example selling EXP boost, or a Reaper skin with a +immunity to rocket damage.. granted, being rng based it doesn't change that everything they've ever sold was still just cosmetic lootboxes. And they make plenty of money doing so, yet still haven't crossed the alleged inevitable "gateway" selling boost and buffs per match.

    Ah if I had a dime for everytime a person made the "player choice" and "it's just cosmetic" arguement lol

    Overwatch based it's economy on loot boxes with odds being lower on higher tier rewards in the hopes of pushing the player to buy loot box packs. They even use the time old " fear of missing out" tactic with "seasonal" items that are time limited to push purchases of loot box packs. Who else uses time limited cosmetics ?

    Thanks for using a example, that just reaffirms my suspicions.

    We can agree to disagree, but rare definitely ain't going out of business and ceasing development if MTX's aren't added, like some people would try to imply.

    Rare ain't going out of business, but Rare almost certainly will cease development on the game if they can't financially justify ongoing development of free content expansions to Microsoft, and the dozens of people working on it.

    They've already committed to keeping "core" content free, so as not to fragment the userbase... which leaves you with non-essential DLC, like cosmetics or pets.

    "It's just cosmetic" holds water just fine as an argument, depending on the context in which it's being deployed. No matter what Jim Sterling thinks about it.

    No they wouldn't and no it doesn't, its actually much cheaper for them to continue ongoing development, than Ceasing development to start on a sequel.

    The only reason that core content is free is because they know they couldn't get away with charging extra for any of it because they released their game 4 to 6 months to early with not enough content.

    The ironic thing is, this "free" content actually generated ongoing profit for them because it translated in to sales along with the correct exposure, shrouded spoils and summits exposure boosted everything, until a few weeks ago. They've literally already proved free content can sell their game to make them ongoing money.

    If rare was smart they would have tried to keep that popularity in exposure going , but instead botched it up in one swoop with a single Dev update.

    By literally fragmenting their player base.

    You know what would sell more copies of SOT to new players ? Adding pets for free, but it's clear they may want to just rinse the existing player base instead of actually growing it with new ones.

  • @troubled-cells said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @shakes-mcqueen said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @troubled-cells said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @tre-oni said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @troubled-cells said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @tre-oni said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @troubled-cells said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @tre-oni said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @troubled-cells said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    Personally i refuse to pay for them.

    I feel it opens the door to all sorts.

    whatever next emotes, vaulted cosmetics or god forbid loot boxes?

    call me old fashioned but i instead believe that if you keep improving your game and adding decent content you can translate that in to sales of your game with the correct marketing and exposure.

    it worked a treat for shrouded spoils.

    Except.. selling a game for a one off price, and then still having those people buy more things they like, while improving the game, translating to more new sales, and again more potential micropurchases is still way more money made for long term improvements than single sales, and waiting around for something to stick, and more people to buy your game.

    The beautiful thing about option 1.. you don't actually have to purchase anything yourself.

    No, but let's be honest, microtransactions ruin In game economies, shadow of war, mortal Kombat x, halo 5, call of duty, battlefront 2 and even the upcoming anthem.

    Being real here.. SoT doesn't exactly have an economy or "meta" to break by selling cosmetic pets.

    Because they don't currently exist, but there would be once introduced.

    To which I'll refer you to my original point, it opens the door for many more.

    I don't believe for one moment these MTX's would be exclusive to pets In the long run, it would be naive to think they are.

    Whats your point? Other than simply being vehemently against it?

    No. There wouldn't suddenly be some meta, or economic destruction because people who wanted to buy cosmetics decided to do so.

    Maybe not exclusively pets, but exclusively cosmetics.. which pets fall under in this instance with how they're intended to be implemented..

    So again.. aside from being obviously against optional cosmetic purchases where is your point?

    "It opens the door for many more"

    Yet you don't see Overwatch for example selling EXP boost, or a Reaper skin with a +immunity to rocket damage.. granted, being rng based it doesn't change that everything they've ever sold was still just cosmetic lootboxes. And they make plenty of money doing so, yet still haven't crossed the alleged inevitable "gateway" selling boost and buffs per match.

    Ah if I had a dime for everytime a person made the "player choice" and "it's just cosmetic" arguement lol

    Overwatch based it's economy on loot boxes with odds being lower on higher tier rewards in the hopes of pushing the player to buy loot box packs. They even use the time old " fear of missing out" tactic with "seasonal" items that are time limited to push purchases of loot box packs. Who else uses time limited cosmetics ?

    Thanks for using a example, that just reaffirms my suspicions.

    We can agree to disagree, but rare definitely ain't going out of business and ceasing development if MTX's aren't added, like some people would try to imply.

    Rare ain't going out of business, but Rare almost certainly will cease development on the game if they can't financially justify ongoing development of free content expansions to Microsoft, and the dozens of people working on it.

    They've already committed to keeping "core" content free, so as not to fragment the userbase... which leaves you with non-essential DLC, like cosmetics or pets.

    "It's just cosmetic" holds water just fine as an argument, depending on the context in which it's being deployed. No matter what Jim Sterling thinks about it.

    No they wouldn't and no it doesn't, its actually much cheaper for them to continue ongoing development, than Ceasing development to start on a sequel.

    The only reason that core content is free is because they know they couldn't get away with charging extra for any of it because they released their game 4 to 6 months to early with not enough content.

    The ironic thing is, this "free" content actually generated ongoing profit for them because it translated in to sales along with the correct exposure, shrouded spoils and summits exposure boosted everything, until a few weeks ago. They've literally already proved free content can sell their game to make them ongoing money.

    If rare was smart they would have tried to keep that popularity in exposure going , but instead botched it up in one swoop with a single Dev update.

    By literally fragmenting their player base.

    You know what would sell more copies of SOT to new players ? Adding pets for free, but it's clear they may want to just rinse the existing player base instead of actually growing it with new ones.

    You're just declaring the opposite of what I said by personal fiat, instead of explaining how it's "cheaper" to continue developing for a game that is probably long into the narrow end of it's sales tail at this point.

    Games generally work like movies - they make the vast majority of their money very early on, and then enter into a lengthy "sales tail", that gets smaller and smaller until it's negligible. Sea of Thieves has been out nearly a year at this point - it's very likely not selling a notable amount of copies at retail any more, and your allegation of a surge in game sales related to the expansions, doesn't seem to be accompanied by any actual evidence.

    So you've got the 4-5 years of development of the game, which are sunk costs before the game comes out. Then the game comes out, and hopefully makes that debt back, with a profit on top. Then you start making post-release free content, eating into that profit as you're still keeping the lights on at Rare for the past year. Now you're entering year two, and Rare need to give Microsoft a financial reason to keep Rare working on this project, instead of the next thing for which they can sell millions of copies at $60 apiece.

    If making strictly free content was "cheaper" than making a new game, it's a wonder that almost no major publishers do it - they either sell DLC/MTX, or they just move on to the next game.

  • Here's my take on this...
    The game was seriously lacking a ton of content at launch that was supposedly already in it. We played the beta, and heard the promises for the launch.

    We bought two copies, and even a year later there is STILL isn't enough content to make the game purchase justified. A year later we STILL cannot even reroll our character's appearance.

    The game was a HUGE missed opportunity, and we won't pay one more red cent for anything in the game... I'm not even sure if we'll ever buy another rare game again in the future as a result, either.

    (And we LOVED all the old Rare title releases! We are huge Rare fans!!)

    We got our money's worth from gameplay during the beta tests, ands a month or two after release, but they simply have not added anything remotely close to "a living breathing world with stories to interact with and discover."

    Pretty much everything fun in the game was interacting with other players because there just wasn't anything else IN the game that was actually fun. The most fun I can recall us having gameplay wise was using the cannons to launch on the skeleton thrones, and thats pretty basic gameplay.

    Buy a pet? NOPE. Pay for a character reroll? NOPE.

    You guys want to shell out more money for the game? Have at it. We haven't looked at it since probably August last year, and nothing they've added looked compelling to start up playing again.

  • I think there needs to be at least one that can be earned in game. I might be willing to pay a relatively small amount for one otherwise...but I doubt I'd drop more than say 2-5.00 USD for a pet...maximum. Just my two doubloons.

  • Nothing... I want the feature that i can steal your pets...

  • @shakes-mcqueen said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @troubled-cells said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @shakes-mcqueen said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @troubled-cells said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @tre-oni said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @troubled-cells said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @tre-oni said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @troubled-cells said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @tre-oni said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @troubled-cells said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    Personally i refuse to pay for them.

    I feel it opens the door to all sorts.

    whatever next emotes, vaulted cosmetics or god forbid loot boxes?

    call me old fashioned but i instead believe that if you keep improving your game and adding decent content you can translate that in to sales of your game with the correct marketing and exposure.

    it worked a treat for shrouded spoils.

    Except.. selling a game for a one off price, and then still having those people buy more things they like, while improving the game, translating to more new sales, and again more potential micropurchases is still way more money made for long term improvements than single sales, and waiting around for something to stick, and more people to buy your game.

    The beautiful thing about option 1.. you don't actually have to purchase anything yourself.

    No, but let's be honest, microtransactions ruin In game economies, shadow of war, mortal Kombat x, halo 5, call of duty, battlefront 2 and even the upcoming anthem.

    Being real here.. SoT doesn't exactly have an economy or "meta" to break by selling cosmetic pets.

    Because they don't currently exist, but there would be once introduced.

    To which I'll refer you to my original point, it opens the door for many more.

    I don't believe for one moment these MTX's would be exclusive to pets In the long run, it would be naive to think they are.

    Whats your point? Other than simply being vehemently against it?

    No. There wouldn't suddenly be some meta, or economic destruction because people who wanted to buy cosmetics decided to do so.

    Maybe not exclusively pets, but exclusively cosmetics.. which pets fall under in this instance with how they're intended to be implemented..

    So again.. aside from being obviously against optional cosmetic purchases where is your point?

    "It opens the door for many more"

    Yet you don't see Overwatch for example selling EXP boost, or a Reaper skin with a +immunity to rocket damage.. granted, being rng based it doesn't change that everything they've ever sold was still just cosmetic lootboxes. And they make plenty of money doing so, yet still haven't crossed the alleged inevitable "gateway" selling boost and buffs per match.

    Ah if I had a dime for everytime a person made the "player choice" and "it's just cosmetic" arguement lol

    Overwatch based it's economy on loot boxes with odds being lower on higher tier rewards in the hopes of pushing the player to buy loot box packs. They even use the time old " fear of missing out" tactic with "seasonal" items that are time limited to push purchases of loot box packs. Who else uses time limited cosmetics ?

    Thanks for using a example, that just reaffirms my suspicions.

    We can agree to disagree, but rare definitely ain't going out of business and ceasing development if MTX's aren't added, like some people would try to imply.

    Rare ain't going out of business, but Rare almost certainly will cease development on the game if they can't financially justify ongoing development of free content expansions to Microsoft, and the dozens of people working on it.

    They've already committed to keeping "core" content free, so as not to fragment the userbase... which leaves you with non-essential DLC, like cosmetics or pets.

    "It's just cosmetic" holds water just fine as an argument, depending on the context in which it's being deployed. No matter what Jim Sterling thinks about it.

    No they wouldn't and no it doesn't, its actually much cheaper for them to continue ongoing development, than Ceasing development to start on a sequel.

    The only reason that core content is free is because they know they couldn't get away with charging extra for any of it because they released their game 4 to 6 months to early with not enough content.

    The ironic thing is, this "free" content actually generated ongoing profit for them because it translated in to sales along with the correct exposure, shrouded spoils and summits exposure boosted everything, until a few weeks ago. They've literally already proved free content can sell their game to make them ongoing money.

    If rare was smart they would have tried to keep that popularity in exposure going , but instead botched it up in one swoop with a single Dev update.

    By literally fragmenting their player base.

    You know what would sell more copies of SOT to new players ? Adding pets for free, but it's clear they may want to just rinse the existing player base instead of actually growing it with new ones.

    You're just declaring the opposite of what I said by personal fiat, instead of explaining how it's "cheaper" to continue developing for a game that is probably long into the narrow end of it's sales tail at this point.

    Games generally work like movies - they make the vast majority of their money very early on, and then enter into a lengthy "sales tail", that gets smaller and smaller until it's negligible. Sea of Thieves has been out nearly a year at this point - it's very likely not selling a notable amount of copies at retail any more, and your allegation of a surge in game sales related to the expansions, doesn't seem to be accompanied by any actual evidence.

    So you've got the 4-5 years of development of the game, which are sunk costs before the game comes out. Then the game comes out, and hopefully makes that debt back, with a profit on top. Then you start making post-release free content, eating into that profit as you're still keeping the lights on at Rare for the past year. Now you're entering year two, and Rare need to give Microsoft a financial reason to keep Rare working on this project, instead of the next thing for which they can sell millions of copies at $60 apiece.

    If making strictly free content was "cheaper" than making a new game, it's a wonder that almost no major publishers do it - they either sell DLC/MTX, or they just move on to the next game.

    Then don't release your game 6 too months early then lol

    The consumer shouldn't have to pay for a developers short comings, especially on a full price game.

    Whilst there isn't any sales numbers for SOT recently, you should use some common sense , rare said themselves that the player base had increased dramatically with new users since shrouded spoils and that's a fact, a reasonable amount of those players will have purchased the game. And if not ? It would be interesting to know if they get revenue from game pass performance.

    So to come full circle my point still stands, creating good free content with the right exposure can continue to sell.

    And I don't buy the movies comparison personally, as I prefer to take the semantics approach.

    Many people tried to liken loot boxes to baseball cards to justify them In paid retail releases for example. Hasn't worked out well for those people has it with some countries making the practice illegal now.

    And in all honesty, if a game gets to a point for a developer where they feel they can't support it unless they start shoe horning monetisation In a year after release, I would much rather they quit while they are ahead, Instead of slowly watching something I love get butchered on life support.

    If rare messed up that's on them, not the consumer.

  • @coolerbravo said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    Nothing... I want the feature that i can steal your pets...

    Spoken like a true pirate

  • MTX is game cancer, seen it ravage a good thing many times. the user base immediately fractures into two camps: F2P vs. P2W, and they go at each other indefinitely like Morlocks & Eloi.

    What's up with the self-hating players who actually lobby on BEHALF of the disease? (are they forum "plants"?)

  • @gareeet said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    Here's my take on this...
    The game was seriously lacking a ton of content at launch that was supposedly already in it. We played the beta, and heard the promises for the launch.

    We bought two copies, and even a year later there is STILL isn't enough content to make the game purchase justified. A year later we STILL cannot even reroll our character's appearance.

    The game was a HUGE missed opportunity, and we won't pay one more red cent for anything in the game... I'm not even sure if we'll ever buy another rare game again in the future as a result, either.

    (And we LOVED all the old Rare title releases! We are huge Rare fans!!)

    We got our money's worth from gameplay during the beta tests, ands a month or two after release, but they simply have not added anything remotely close to "a living breathing world with stories to interact with and discover."

    Pretty much everything fun in the game was interacting with other players because there just wasn't anything else IN the game that was actually fun. The most fun I can recall us having gameplay wise was using the cannons to launch on the skeleton thrones, and thats pretty basic gameplay.

    Buy a pet? NOPE. Pay for a character reroll? NOPE.

    You guys want to shell out more money for the game? Have at it. We haven't looked at it since probably August last year, and nothing they've added looked compelling to start up playing again.

    You said there wasn't enough content in the game to make your purchases justified, then a couple of paragraphs later said you got your money's worth from the betas and first couple of months after release.

    And how would you even know if there's enough content to be justified, if you haven't touched it since August? By my reckoning, half of the four major content releases have come out since then.

    You're certainly entitled to not like the game, and I wouldn't begrudge you that opinion. But you're kinda contradicting yourself here.

  • @khompewtur said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    MTX is game cancer, seen it ravage a good thing many times. the user base immediately fractures into two camps: F2P vs. P2W, and they go at each other indefinitely like Morlocks & Eloi.

    What's up with the self-hating players who actually lobby on BEHALF of the disease? (are they forum "plants"?)

    It has nothing to do with liking MTX. I'd love for every game I play to have years of substantial free content and expansions added to them, with nary a microtransaction or "DLC" option in sight. However, I'm also an adult in their 30s, with some understanding of how the business of games works, and cognizant of the fact that publishers are in the game to make money, not as an entertainment charity.

    In ye olden days, a game like Mega Man 3 would get released, and that'd be it. Even if there was a bug, there was nothing to be done about it, aside from maybe fix it in updated manufacturing runs of the cartridge. A really successful RPG on PC or something, might eventually get an expansion at a fixed, one-time cost. My point is, a game got shipped, and then they moved on to the next game. Now we live in an era where games are patched, updated, and have more 'stuff' added to them for months or even years after launch.

    If you'd prefer the olden days model I laid out above, then that's a coherent position at least, and I salute you. However, if you LIKE to see games you enjoy get months and years of stuff added to them - especially FREE stuff - at some point a business case has to be made to the entity writing the checks to keep the lights on at your studio. Some games do this with odious randomized "loot boxes". Some do it with cosmetics. Some do this with "season passes" of various forms. There are good ways of doing DLC, and bad ways.

    "Hey, what if our entire studio just works on exclusively free stuff for years, and we pray that it spikes new retail sales enough to cover the costs and make a profit!" is not a coherent business case for a video game. The only thing this requires me to speak "on behalf of", is reality.

  • @shakes-mcqueen said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @khompewtur said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    MTX is game cancer, seen it ravage a good thing many times. the user base immediately fractures into two camps: F2P vs. P2W, and they go at each other indefinitely like Morlocks & Eloi.

    What's up with the self-hating players who actually lobby on BEHALF of the disease? (are they forum "plants"?)

    It has nothing to do with liking MTX. I'd love for every game I play to have years of substantial free content and expansions added to them, with nary a microtransaction or "DLC" option in sight. However, I'm also an adult in their 30s, with some understanding of how the business of games works, and cognizant of the fact that publishers are in the game to make money, not as an entertainment charity.

    In ye olden days, a game like Mega Man 3 would get released, and that'd be it. Even if there was a bug, there was nothing to be done about it, aside from maybe fix it in updated manufacturing runs of the cartridge. A really successful RPG on PC or something, might eventually get an expansion at a fixed, one-time cost. My point is, a game got shipped, and then they moved on to the next game. Now we live in an era where games are patched, updated, and have more 'stuff' added to them for months or even years after launch.

    If you'd prefer the olden days model I laid out above, then that's a coherent position at least, and I salute you. However, if you LIKE to see games you enjoy get months and years of stuff added to them - especially FREE stuff - at some point a business case has to be made to the entity writing the checks to keep the lights on at your studio. Some games do this with odious randomized "loot boxes". Some do it with cosmetics. Some do this with "season passes" of various forms. There are good ways of doing DLC, and bad ways.

    "Hey, what if our entire studio just works on exclusively free stuff for years, and we pray that it spikes new retail sales enough to cover the costs and make a profit!" is not a coherent business case for a video game. The only thing this requires me to speak "on behalf of", is reality.

    Soo... Dont burn through your profits by releasing your game at least 6 months too early then, instead delay it.

    This is on rare , not the consumer.

  • 1.99 pounds max. 😉

  • @ktingaling I get where you're coming from but being able to buy Dabloons is a terrible idea.

    If you can do that you can then buy rep, buy gold, etc like you mentioned.
    Agreed that there should be some way to get pets via the grind. Maybe via gold? I'd rather not introduce a third currency.

    Otherwise give everyone the base level of pets for free (like they do with all tools) and have the skins for the pets be locked behind challenges/achievements

  • I like where there going with free updates and more hope they continue doing that with pets.

  • I hope there will be a way to grind for them instead of having to pay for a pet you want.

  • @troubled-cells MTXs are acceptable. Period.

  • @mr-dragon-raaar lucky i dont take the tube then i guess 🙄

  • @troubled-cells said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @shakes-mcqueen said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @khompewtur said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    MTX is game cancer, seen it ravage a good thing many times. the user base immediately fractures into two camps: F2P vs. P2W, and they go at each other indefinitely like Morlocks & Eloi.

    What's up with the self-hating players who actually lobby on BEHALF of the disease? (are they forum "plants"?)

    It has nothing to do with liking MTX. I'd love for every game I play to have years of substantial free content and expansions added to them, with nary a microtransaction or "DLC" option in sight. However, I'm also an adult in their 30s, with some understanding of how the business of games works, and cognizant of the fact that publishers are in the game to make money, not as an entertainment charity.

    In ye olden days, a game like Mega Man 3 would get released, and that'd be it. Even if there was a bug, there was nothing to be done about it, aside from maybe fix it in updated manufacturing runs of the cartridge. A really successful RPG on PC or something, might eventually get an expansion at a fixed, one-time cost. My point is, a game got shipped, and then they moved on to the next game. Now we live in an era where games are patched, updated, and have more 'stuff' added to them for months or even years after launch.

    If you'd prefer the olden days model I laid out above, then that's a coherent position at least, and I salute you. However, if you LIKE to see games you enjoy get months and years of stuff added to them - especially FREE stuff - at some point a business case has to be made to the entity writing the checks to keep the lights on at your studio. Some games do this with odious randomized "loot boxes". Some do it with cosmetics. Some do this with "season passes" of various forms. There are good ways of doing DLC, and bad ways.

    "Hey, what if our entire studio just works on exclusively free stuff for years, and we pray that it spikes new retail sales enough to cover the costs and make a profit!" is not a coherent business case for a video game. The only thing this requires me to speak "on behalf of", is reality.

    Soo... Dont burn through your profits by releasing your game at least 6 months too early then, instead delay it.

    This is on rare , not the consumer.

    Even if I granted you both of these statements, it still doesn't resolve anything. The point is still ultimately: Do you want them to continue adding on and building out the Sea of Thieves experience, or not?

    Releasing a game that feels like it came out six months too early to some people, doesn't require them to do anything to "make good" on that criticism. However, Rare have tried to - they altered their internal roadmap, put off DLC plans, and focused on adding more "content" for the past year.

    We are entering year two in a few weeks, and continuing to have the entire studio focused on adding free expansions to the game, eventually requires a coherent business case. In this case, that will initially be seeing if people want to spend a few quid on a cosmetic pet. That's about as benign as DLC gets - a small, optional tchotchke, with no randomization whatsoever.

    Now, if eventually the "paid" stuff gets over-bearing and gross, or they try to charge $40 for a parrot, or they lock meaningful gear behind a paywall (like different kinds of swords, boarding axes, etc.), I'll be right on the front lines with you complaining about it.

    In the interim, I'll gladly support their ongoing work with a $5 parrot (assuming they are $5).

  • In game pets should be obtainable through quests and bought with gold. maybe pet skins or clothing can be bought. cats- tabby, orange calico etc. little pirate hats...

  • @shakes-mcqueen said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @gareeet said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    Here's my take on this...
    The game was seriously lacking a ton of content at launch that was supposedly already in it. We played the beta, and heard the promises for the launch.

    We bought two copies, and even a year later there is STILL isn't enough content to make the game purchase justified. A year later we STILL cannot even reroll our character's appearance.

    The game was a HUGE missed opportunity, and we won't pay one more red cent for anything in the game... I'm not even sure if we'll ever buy another rare game again in the future as a result, either.

    (And we LOVED all the old Rare title releases! We are huge Rare fans!!)

    We got our money's worth from gameplay during the beta tests, ands a month or two after release, but they simply have not added anything remotely close to "a living breathing world with stories to interact with and discover."

    Pretty much everything fun in the game was interacting with other players because there just wasn't anything else IN the game that was actually fun. The most fun I can recall us having gameplay wise was using the cannons to launch on the skeleton thrones, and thats pretty basic gameplay.

    Buy a pet? NOPE. Pay for a character reroll? NOPE.

    You guys want to shell out more money for the game? Have at it. We haven't looked at it since probably August last year, and nothing they've added looked compelling to start up playing again.

    You said there wasn't enough content in the game to make your purchases justified, then a couple of paragraphs later said you got your money's worth from the betas and first couple of months after release.

    And how would you even know if there's enough content to be justified, if you haven't touched it since August? By my reckoning, half of the four major content releases have come out since then.

    You're certainly entitled to not like the game, and I wouldn't begrudge you that opinion. But you're kinda contradicting yourself here.

    Not in my opinion, which is all it is.. my opinion.

    We played probably 40 hours total between us both between the beta tests, and the first few months of release. Those hours justified the cost for what we paid.

    The last thing we did was the skeleton ship event... the meg event was a troll nightmare, making us complete the entire thing 3 times before we could complete it from people either just quitting right when the final battle starts, or people trolling us firing on us when the event started. The back n forth fetch garbage combined with the troll behaviour was so bad we didn't go back until the skeleton ship event. The skeleton ship even had the same exact BS fetch garbage, and the skeleton ship ai was pretty bad, and very disappointing. We didn't even bother continuing it to unlock the cosmetics.

    After that we just decided we were done. Neither of us really liked the pirates the random generator rolled for us, and after both of us spending a half hour on the generator we finally just settled on launch day wanting to finally play.

    Islands are pretty much empty, pretty to look at but with very little to discover or do. It has nothing really to do with pvp, but compared to something like assassins creed black flag, there is like 1/50th of significant content in the game, and thats a year after launch and what, 6 or 7 years after Black Flag?

    They painted a very different picture of what the game was going to become, and what actually did get released.

    Beta testers TOLD them all this during all the testing for a year, and they either forgot or just decided to ignore all the community feedback.

    And after a year we STILL can't reroll our appearance? One programmer could add that in the options menu in a week, but its still not in game.

  • @shakes-mcqueen said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @khompewtur said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    MTX is game cancer, seen it ravage a good thing many times. the user base immediately fractures into two camps: F2P vs. P2W, and they go at each other indefinitely like Morlocks & Eloi.

    What's up with the self-hating players who actually lobby on BEHALF of the disease? (are they forum "plants"?)

    It has nothing to do with liking MTX. I'd love for every game I play to have years of substantial free content and expansions added to them, with nary a microtransaction or "DLC" option in sight. However, I'm also an adult in their 30s, with some understanding of how the business of games works, and cognizant of the fact that publishers are in the game to make money, not as an entertainment charity.

    In ye olden days, a game like Mega Man 3 would get released, and that'd be it. Even if there was a bug, there was nothing to be done about it, aside from maybe fix it in updated manufacturing runs of the cartridge. A really successful RPG on PC or something, might eventually get an expansion at a fixed, one-time cost. My point is, a game got shipped, and then they moved on to the next game. Now we live in an era where games are patched, updated, and have more 'stuff' added to them for months or even years after launch.

    If you'd prefer the olden days model I laid out above, then that's a coherent position at least, and I salute you. However, if you LIKE to see games you enjoy get months and years of stuff added to them - especially FREE stuff - at some point a business case has to be made to the entity writing the checks to keep the lights on at your studio. Some games do this with odious randomized "loot boxes". Some do it with cosmetics. Some do this with "season passes" of various forms. There are good ways of doing DLC, and bad ways.

    "Hey, what if our entire studio just works on exclusively free stuff for years, and we pray that it spikes new retail sales enough to cover the costs and make a profit!" is not a coherent business case for a video game. The only thing this requires me to speak "on behalf of", is reality.

    No one is asking for free-stuff. Not at all.

    We pay subscriptions for GamePass & Xbox live, which should in turn be a royalty stream for Rare (unless they did something crazy like take a lump sum).

    The GamePass royalties are what funds the content, we are renting the intellectual property.

    the Xbox live fees should cover the server architecture and hardware to support the player traffic. (and does this go right back to partner Microsoft, who's running the game on a cluster of Azure servers?)

    Take the Nexflix model, people subscribe to Nexflix who in turn then pay the content providers.

    People who buy the game outright essentially represent taking a larger chunk of royalties up-front as a lump-sum.

    If Rare is not able to sustain their business model via subscription royalties, then I would turn to in-game advertising (because this is a non-factor "balance of play" affecting source of revenue).

    How about every time you are on the Ferry Of The Damned the "damnation" is you have to watch a preview for some awful Netflix show, or watch an ad for 'As Seen On Tv'. I mean you're on the ferry of the damned for the duration of a commercial, seems like a good "penalty". Project the commercial onto the main sail or something.

    if they turn to in-game purchases these usually get tied to some sort of performance impact, and creates the class-system of players between the haves/have-nots. (I would not object in any way to 100% purely cosmetic MTX offerings. so long as it doesnt affect balance of play, then if people want to buy "luxury" stylings, fine)

    If the ultimate intent of a game is to microtransact, that needs to be made clear up front. theres something very dishonest about the "bait & switch", i.e. "I got you hooked on the free sample... and NOW you're gonna pay for riding the purple dragon!".

    If they said up front, this is gonna be a microtransaction game that would at least give players the opportunity to make that conscious decision before investing time in the game. If the rationale was " we dont want to reveal up front this is going to be an MTX model eventually, because then people won't sign-up", I'd be like "EXACTLY MY POINT!!"

  • @khompewtur Well said!
    My answer to the question "How much would you pay for a pet?" :
    $60 and I already paid it.

  • @shakes-mcqueen said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @troubled-cells said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @shakes-mcqueen said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @khompewtur said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    MTX is game cancer, seen it ravage a good thing many times. the user base immediately fractures into two camps: F2P vs. P2W, and they go at each other indefinitely like Morlocks & Eloi.

    What's up with the self-hating players who actually lobby on BEHALF of the disease? (are they forum "plants"?)

    It has nothing to do with liking MTX. I'd love for every game I play to have years of substantial free content and expansions added to them, with nary a microtransaction or "DLC" option in sight. However, I'm also an adult in their 30s, with some understanding of how the business of games works, and cognizant of the fact that publishers are in the game to make money, not as an entertainment charity.

    In ye olden days, a game like Mega Man 3 would get released, and that'd be it. Even if there was a bug, there was nothing to be done about it, aside from maybe fix it in updated manufacturing runs of the cartridge. A really successful RPG on PC or something, might eventually get an expansion at a fixed, one-time cost. My point is, a game got shipped, and then they moved on to the next game. Now we live in an era where games are patched, updated, and have more 'stuff' added to them for months or even years after launch.

    If you'd prefer the olden days model I laid out above, then that's a coherent position at least, and I salute you. However, if you LIKE to see games you enjoy get months and years of stuff added to them - especially FREE stuff - at some point a business case has to be made to the entity writing the checks to keep the lights on at your studio. Some games do this with odious randomized "loot boxes". Some do it with cosmetics. Some do this with "season passes" of various forms. There are good ways of doing DLC, and bad ways.

    "Hey, what if our entire studio just works on exclusively free stuff for years, and we pray that it spikes new retail sales enough to cover the costs and make a profit!" is not a coherent business case for a video game. The only thing this requires me to speak "on behalf of", is reality.

    Soo... Dont burn through your profits by releasing your game at least 6 months too early then, instead delay it.

    This is on rare , not the consumer.

    Even if I granted you both of these statements, it still doesn't resolve anything. The point is still ultimately: Do you want them to continue adding on and building out the Sea of Thieves experience, or not?

    Releasing a game that feels like it came out six months too early to some people, doesn't require them to do anything to "make good" on that criticism. However, Rare have tried to - they altered their internal roadmap, put off DLC plans, and focused on adding more "content" for the past year.

    We are entering year two in a few weeks, and continuing to have the entire studio focused on adding free expansions to the game, eventually requires a coherent business case. In this case, that will initially be seeing if people want to spend a few quid on a cosmetic pet. That's about as benign as DLC gets - a small, optional tchotchke, with no randomization whatsoever.

    Now, if eventually the "paid" stuff gets over-bearing and gross, or they try to charge $40 for a parrot, or they lock meaningful gear behind a paywall (like different kinds of swords, boarding axes, etc.), I'll be right on the front lines with you complaining about it.

    In the interim, I'll gladly support their ongoing work with a $5 parrot (assuming they are $5).

    No it doesn't require them to make good, but be honest if they didn't , the game would have been in the dumpster a long time ago, especially if they had charged for those updates. Once again adding weight to my point of continuosly adding free content with the right exposure results In sales for them.

    So delaying the game is actually a viable point, all I hear is rare needs money to cover overheads from fans, delaying your game means less cost because you only have to implement less servers to cover the timed testing periods. As opposed to releasing it in a bare bones state content wise and having all the lights on at full capacity so to speak essentially shooting themselves In the foot with the bills. This would have actually saved them money, and thus is on them not the consumer.

    And that's speaking In "business" terms.

    I will absolutely not be supporting any MTX rare implements in SOT.

  • Why anyone would want to pay money on game they already paid for to get cosmetics up front - in a game that revolves around playing the game to get cosmetics is beyond me. You've thrown away more money to simply skip the point of the game in such a case. Its downright confusing.

    Secondly, as PC player why would I want to buy a pet? With crossplay "Optional" Who is there to show it off too? Skeletons? Sea of Sloops isn't exactly the place I'd consider sinking cash into.

  • @troubled-cells said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @shakes-mcqueen said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @troubled-cells said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @shakes-mcqueen said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @khompewtur said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    MTX is game cancer, seen it ravage a good thing many times. the user base immediately fractures into two camps: F2P vs. P2W, and they go at each other indefinitely like Morlocks & Eloi.

    What's up with the self-hating players who actually lobby on BEHALF of the disease? (are they forum "plants"?)

    It has nothing to do with liking MTX. I'd love for every game I play to have years of substantial free content and expansions added to them, with nary a microtransaction or "DLC" option in sight. However, I'm also an adult in their 30s, with some understanding of how the business of games works, and cognizant of the fact that publishers are in the game to make money, not as an entertainment charity.

    In ye olden days, a game like Mega Man 3 would get released, and that'd be it. Even if there was a bug, there was nothing to be done about it, aside from maybe fix it in updated manufacturing runs of the cartridge. A really successful RPG on PC or something, might eventually get an expansion at a fixed, one-time cost. My point is, a game got shipped, and then they moved on to the next game. Now we live in an era where games are patched, updated, and have more 'stuff' added to them for months or even years after launch.

    If you'd prefer the olden days model I laid out above, then that's a coherent position at least, and I salute you. However, if you LIKE to see games you enjoy get months and years of stuff added to them - especially FREE stuff - at some point a business case has to be made to the entity writing the checks to keep the lights on at your studio. Some games do this with odious randomized "loot boxes". Some do it with cosmetics. Some do this with "season passes" of various forms. There are good ways of doing DLC, and bad ways.

    "Hey, what if our entire studio just works on exclusively free stuff for years, and we pray that it spikes new retail sales enough to cover the costs and make a profit!" is not a coherent business case for a video game. The only thing this requires me to speak "on behalf of", is reality.

    Soo... Dont burn through your profits by releasing your game at least 6 months too early then, instead delay it.

    This is on rare , not the consumer.

    Even if I granted you both of these statements, it still doesn't resolve anything. The point is still ultimately: Do you want them to continue adding on and building out the Sea of Thieves experience, or not?

    Releasing a game that feels like it came out six months too early to some people, doesn't require them to do anything to "make good" on that criticism. However, Rare have tried to - they altered their internal roadmap, put off DLC plans, and focused on adding more "content" for the past year.

    We are entering year two in a few weeks, and continuing to have the entire studio focused on adding free expansions to the game, eventually requires a coherent business case. In this case, that will initially be seeing if people want to spend a few quid on a cosmetic pet. That's about as benign as DLC gets - a small, optional tchotchke, with no randomization whatsoever.

    Now, if eventually the "paid" stuff gets over-bearing and gross, or they try to charge $40 for a parrot, or they lock meaningful gear behind a paywall (like different kinds of swords, boarding axes, etc.), I'll be right on the front lines with you complaining about it.

    In the interim, I'll gladly support their ongoing work with a $5 parrot (assuming they are $5).

    No it doesn't require them to make good, but be honest if they didn't , the game would have been in the dumpster a long time ago, especially if they had charged for those updates. Once again adding weight to my point of continuosly adding free content with the right exposure results In sales for them.

    So delaying the game is actually a viable point, all I hear is rare needs money to cover overheads from fans, delaying your game means less cost because you only have to implement less servers to cover the timed testing periods. As opposed to releasing it in a bare bones state content wise and having all the lights on at full capacity so to speak essentially shooting themselves In the foot with the bills. This would have actually saved them money, and thus is on them not the consumer.

    And that's speaking In "business" terms.

    I will absolutely not be supporting any MTX rare implements in SOT.

    My entire point is that whether the game is in "the dumpster" after a few months, doesn't MATTER to the publisher. They've got your $60 already, and Game Pass is constantly adding more stuff to keep subscribers on the line, like Netflix.


    As for Khompewtur... I'm not even sure where to start with that post, except to say that I'm extremely doubtful that Microsoft are even earning a profit on Game Pass right now at $9.99 a month, if you're even in the 1% of people who isn't on one of those promotional deals for $1, or $2, or three months for the price of one. They see Game Pass as a consistent future profit driver for them, and thus are willing to let it burn cash for now - something they can afford to do.

    Nor are all Sea of Thieves players even necessarily Game Pass subs to begin with.

    Oh, and they announced DLC would come to the game a few months after launch... before it launched. So there goes that reasoning. I think they even confirmed it would be pets.

  • @shakes-mcqueen said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @troubled-cells said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @shakes-mcqueen said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @troubled-cells said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @shakes-mcqueen said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @khompewtur said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    MTX is game cancer, seen it ravage a good thing many times. the user base immediately fractures into two camps: F2P vs. P2W, and they go at each other indefinitely like Morlocks & Eloi.

    What's up with the self-hating players who actually lobby on BEHALF of the disease? (are they forum "plants"?)

    It has nothing to do with liking MTX. I'd love for every game I play to have years of substantial free content and expansions added to them, with nary a microtransaction or "DLC" option in sight. However, I'm also an adult in their 30s, with some understanding of how the business of games works, and cognizant of the fact that publishers are in the game to make money, not as an entertainment charity.

    In ye olden days, a game like Mega Man 3 would get released, and that'd be it. Even if there was a bug, there was nothing to be done about it, aside from maybe fix it in updated manufacturing runs of the cartridge. A really successful RPG on PC or something, might eventually get an expansion at a fixed, one-time cost. My point is, a game got shipped, and then they moved on to the next game. Now we live in an era where games are patched, updated, and have more 'stuff' added to them for months or even years after launch.

    If you'd prefer the olden days model I laid out above, then that's a coherent position at least, and I salute you. However, if you LIKE to see games you enjoy get months and years of stuff added to them - especially FREE stuff - at some point a business case has to be made to the entity writing the checks to keep the lights on at your studio. Some games do this with odious randomized "loot boxes". Some do it with cosmetics. Some do this with "season passes" of various forms. There are good ways of doing DLC, and bad ways.

    "Hey, what if our entire studio just works on exclusively free stuff for years, and we pray that it spikes new retail sales enough to cover the costs and make a profit!" is not a coherent business case for a video game. The only thing this requires me to speak "on behalf of", is reality.

    Soo... Dont burn through your profits by releasing your game at least 6 months too early then, instead delay it.

    This is on rare , not the consumer.

    Even if I granted you both of these statements, it still doesn't resolve anything. The point is still ultimately: Do you want them to continue adding on and building out the Sea of Thieves experience, or not?

    Releasing a game that feels like it came out six months too early to some people, doesn't require them to do anything to "make good" on that criticism. However, Rare have tried to - they altered their internal roadmap, put off DLC plans, and focused on adding more "content" for the past year.

    We are entering year two in a few weeks, and continuing to have the entire studio focused on adding free expansions to the game, eventually requires a coherent business case. In this case, that will initially be seeing if people want to spend a few quid on a cosmetic pet. That's about as benign as DLC gets - a small, optional tchotchke, with no randomization whatsoever.

    Now, if eventually the "paid" stuff gets over-bearing and gross, or they try to charge $40 for a parrot, or they lock meaningful gear behind a paywall (like different kinds of swords, boarding axes, etc.), I'll be right on the front lines with you complaining about it.

    In the interim, I'll gladly support their ongoing work with a $5 parrot (assuming they are $5).

    No it doesn't require them to make good, but be honest if they didn't , the game would have been in the dumpster a long time ago, especially if they had charged for those updates. Once again adding weight to my point of continuosly adding free content with the right exposure results In sales for them.

    So delaying the game is actually a viable point, all I hear is rare needs money to cover overheads from fans, delaying your game means less cost because you only have to implement less servers to cover the timed testing periods. As opposed to releasing it in a bare bones state content wise and having all the lights on at full capacity so to speak essentially shooting themselves In the foot with the bills. This would have actually saved them money, and thus is on them not the consumer.

    And that's speaking In "business" terms.

    I will absolutely not be supporting any MTX rare implements in SOT.

    My entire point is that whether the game is in "the dumpster" after a few months, doesn't MATTER to the publisher. They've got your $60 already, and Game Pass is constantly adding more stuff to keep subscribers on the line, like Netflix.


    As for Khompewtur... I'm not even sure where to start with that post, except to say that I'm extremely doubtful that Microsoft are even earning a profit on Game Pass right now at $9.99 a month, if you're even in the 1% of people who isn't on one of those promotional deals for $1, or $2, or three months for the price of one. They see Game Pass as a consistent future profit driver for them, and thus are willing to let it burn cash for now - something they can afford to do.

    Nor are all Sea of Thieves players even necessarily Game Pass subs to begin with.

    Oh, and they announced DLC would come to the game a few months after launch... before it launched. So there goes that reasoning. I think they even confirmed it would be pets.

    So if the game goes in the dumpster and looses a huge amount of players , because of a lack of support, why on earth would a consumer be inclined to spend on MTX'S then? Because they won't be.

    It's also in rare's best interest not to be in that situation, because consumers will loose faith in the game and most importantly the developer with regards to their reputation and future projects.

  • @troubled-cells said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @shakes-mcqueen said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @troubled-cells said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @shakes-mcqueen said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @troubled-cells said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @shakes-mcqueen said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @khompewtur said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    MTX is game cancer, seen it ravage a good thing many times. the user base immediately fractures into two camps: F2P vs. P2W, and they go at each other indefinitely like Morlocks & Eloi.

    What's up with the self-hating players who actually lobby on BEHALF of the disease? (are they forum "plants"?)

    It has nothing to do with liking MTX. I'd love for every game I play to have years of substantial free content and expansions added to them, with nary a microtransaction or "DLC" option in sight. However, I'm also an adult in their 30s, with some understanding of how the business of games works, and cognizant of the fact that publishers are in the game to make money, not as an entertainment charity.

    In ye olden days, a game like Mega Man 3 would get released, and that'd be it. Even if there was a bug, there was nothing to be done about it, aside from maybe fix it in updated manufacturing runs of the cartridge. A really successful RPG on PC or something, might eventually get an expansion at a fixed, one-time cost. My point is, a game got shipped, and then they moved on to the next game. Now we live in an era where games are patched, updated, and have more 'stuff' added to them for months or even years after launch.

    If you'd prefer the olden days model I laid out above, then that's a coherent position at least, and I salute you. However, if you LIKE to see games you enjoy get months and years of stuff added to them - especially FREE stuff - at some point a business case has to be made to the entity writing the checks to keep the lights on at your studio. Some games do this with odious randomized "loot boxes". Some do it with cosmetics. Some do this with "season passes" of various forms. There are good ways of doing DLC, and bad ways.

    "Hey, what if our entire studio just works on exclusively free stuff for years, and we pray that it spikes new retail sales enough to cover the costs and make a profit!" is not a coherent business case for a video game. The only thing this requires me to speak "on behalf of", is reality.

    Soo... Dont burn through your profits by releasing your game at least 6 months too early then, instead delay it.

    This is on rare , not the consumer.

    Even if I granted you both of these statements, it still doesn't resolve anything. The point is still ultimately: Do you want them to continue adding on and building out the Sea of Thieves experience, or not?

    Releasing a game that feels like it came out six months too early to some people, doesn't require them to do anything to "make good" on that criticism. However, Rare have tried to - they altered their internal roadmap, put off DLC plans, and focused on adding more "content" for the past year.

    We are entering year two in a few weeks, and continuing to have the entire studio focused on adding free expansions to the game, eventually requires a coherent business case. In this case, that will initially be seeing if people want to spend a few quid on a cosmetic pet. That's about as benign as DLC gets - a small, optional tchotchke, with no randomization whatsoever.

    Now, if eventually the "paid" stuff gets over-bearing and gross, or they try to charge $40 for a parrot, or they lock meaningful gear behind a paywall (like different kinds of swords, boarding axes, etc.), I'll be right on the front lines with you complaining about it.

    In the interim, I'll gladly support their ongoing work with a $5 parrot (assuming they are $5).

    No it doesn't require them to make good, but be honest if they didn't , the game would have been in the dumpster a long time ago, especially if they had charged for those updates. Once again adding weight to my point of continuosly adding free content with the right exposure results In sales for them.

    So delaying the game is actually a viable point, all I hear is rare needs money to cover overheads from fans, delaying your game means less cost because you only have to implement less servers to cover the timed testing periods. As opposed to releasing it in a bare bones state content wise and having all the lights on at full capacity so to speak essentially shooting themselves In the foot with the bills. This would have actually saved them money, and thus is on them not the consumer.

    And that's speaking In "business" terms.

    I will absolutely not be supporting any MTX rare implements in SOT.

    My entire point is that whether the game is in "the dumpster" after a few months, doesn't MATTER to the publisher. They've got your $60 already, and Game Pass is constantly adding more stuff to keep subscribers on the line, like Netflix.


    As for Khompewtur... I'm not even sure where to start with that post, except to say that I'm extremely doubtful that Microsoft are even earning a profit on Game Pass right now at $9.99 a month, if you're even in the 1% of people who isn't on one of those promotional deals for $1, or $2, or three months for the price of one. They see Game Pass as a consistent future profit driver for them, and thus are willing to let it burn cash for now - something they can afford to do.

    Nor are all Sea of Thieves players even necessarily Game Pass subs to begin with.

    Oh, and they announced DLC would come to the game a few months after launch... before it launched. So there goes that reasoning. I think they even confirmed it would be pets.

    So if the game goes in the dumpster and looses a huge amount of players , because of a lack of support, why on earth would a consumer be inclined to spend on MTX'S then? Because they won't be.

    It's also in rare's best interest not to be in that situation, because consumers will loose faith in the game and most importantly the developer with regards to their reputation and future projects.

    We are talking about a scenario where the game just gets released, and they move on - thus the game going into "the dumpster" as a result. No microtransactions of any kind - game comes out, game is game, game doesn't change. Rare moves on to Banjo-Kazooie 3, or whatever.

    Not the actual scenario here, where they've continued building on the experience for a year, and are now looking at adding a DLC item for optional purchase.

  • @shakes-mcqueen said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @troubled-cells said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @shakes-mcqueen said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @troubled-cells said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @shakes-mcqueen said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @troubled-cells said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @shakes-mcqueen said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    @khompewtur said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    MTX is game cancer, seen it ravage a good thing many times. the user base immediately fractures into two camps: F2P vs. P2W, and they go at each other indefinitely like Morlocks & Eloi.

    What's up with the self-hating players who actually lobby on BEHALF of the disease? (are they forum "plants"?)

    It has nothing to do with liking MTX. I'd love for every game I play to have years of substantial free content and expansions added to them, with nary a microtransaction or "DLC" option in sight. However, I'm also an adult in their 30s, with some understanding of how the business of games works, and cognizant of the fact that publishers are in the game to make money, not as an entertainment charity.

    In ye olden days, a game like Mega Man 3 would get released, and that'd be it. Even if there was a bug, there was nothing to be done about it, aside from maybe fix it in updated manufacturing runs of the cartridge. A really successful RPG on PC or something, might eventually get an expansion at a fixed, one-time cost. My point is, a game got shipped, and then they moved on to the next game. Now we live in an era where games are patched, updated, and have more 'stuff' added to them for months or even years after launch.

    If you'd prefer the olden days model I laid out above, then that's a coherent position at least, and I salute you. However, if you LIKE to see games you enjoy get months and years of stuff added to them - especially FREE stuff - at some point a business case has to be made to the entity writing the checks to keep the lights on at your studio. Some games do this with odious randomized "loot boxes". Some do it with cosmetics. Some do this with "season passes" of various forms. There are good ways of doing DLC, and bad ways.

    "Hey, what if our entire studio just works on exclusively free stuff for years, and we pray that it spikes new retail sales enough to cover the costs and make a profit!" is not a coherent business case for a video game. The only thing this requires me to speak "on behalf of", is reality.

    Soo... Dont burn through your profits by releasing your game at least 6 months too early then, instead delay it.

    This is on rare , not the consumer.

    Even if I granted you both of these statements, it still doesn't resolve anything. The point is still ultimately: Do you want them to continue adding on and building out the Sea of Thieves experience, or not?

    Releasing a game that feels like it came out six months too early to some people, doesn't require them to do anything to "make good" on that criticism. However, Rare have tried to - they altered their internal roadmap, put off DLC plans, and focused on adding more "content" for the past year.

    We are entering year two in a few weeks, and continuing to have the entire studio focused on adding free expansions to the game, eventually requires a coherent business case. In this case, that will initially be seeing if people want to spend a few quid on a cosmetic pet. That's about as benign as DLC gets - a small, optional tchotchke, with no randomization whatsoever.

    Now, if eventually the "paid" stuff gets over-bearing and gross, or they try to charge $40 for a parrot, or they lock meaningful gear behind a paywall (like different kinds of swords, boarding axes, etc.), I'll be right on the front lines with you complaining about it.

    In the interim, I'll gladly support their ongoing work with a $5 parrot (assuming they are $5).

    No it doesn't require them to make good, but be honest if they didn't , the game would have been in the dumpster a long time ago, especially if they had charged for those updates. Once again adding weight to my point of continuosly adding free content with the right exposure results In sales for them.

    So delaying the game is actually a viable point, all I hear is rare needs money to cover overheads from fans, delaying your game means less cost because you only have to implement less servers to cover the timed testing periods. As opposed to releasing it in a bare bones state content wise and having all the lights on at full capacity so to speak essentially shooting themselves In the foot with the bills. This would have actually saved them money, and thus is on them not the consumer.

    And that's speaking In "business" terms.

    I will absolutely not be supporting any MTX rare implements in SOT.

    My entire point is that whether the game is in "the dumpster" after a few months, doesn't MATTER to the publisher. They've got your $60 already, and Game Pass is constantly adding more stuff to keep subscribers on the line, like Netflix.


    As for Khompewtur... I'm not even sure where to start with that post, except to say that I'm extremely doubtful that Microsoft are even earning a profit on Game Pass right now at $9.99 a month, if you're even in the 1% of people who isn't on one of those promotional deals for $1, or $2, or three months for the price of one. They see Game Pass as a consistent future profit driver for them, and thus are willing to let it burn cash for now - something they can afford to do.

    Nor are all Sea of Thieves players even necessarily Game Pass subs to begin with.

    Oh, and they announced DLC would come to the game a few months after launch... before it launched. So there goes that reasoning. I think they even confirmed it would be pets.

    So if the game goes in the dumpster and looses a huge amount of players , because of a lack of support, why on earth would a consumer be inclined to spend on MTX'S then? Because they won't be.

    It's also in rare's best interest not to be in that situation, because consumers will loose faith in the game and most importantly the developer with regards to their reputation and future projects.

    We are talking about a scenario where the game just gets released, and they move on - thus the game going into "the dumpster" as a result. No microtransactions of any kind - game comes out, game is game, game doesn't change. Rare moves on to Banjo-Kazooie 3, or whatever.

    Not the actual scenario here, where they've continued building on the experience for a year, and are now looking at adding a DLC item for optional purchase.

    Which I refuse to support because it opens the door to many more.

    The theoretical situations are the situations rare could of have faced though if they hadn't of supplemented the game with free content. All In the name of reinforcing my point about them releasing the game too early, free content contributing to increased sales or potentially instead trying to charge for that content on such a bare bones experience which is irrefutable, the majority of fans and media outlets have already made that known and were very vocal about it on release, consumers aren't stupid.

    Surprised you couldn't figure that out.

  • I don’t care the $ amount IF it goes to charity.

  • @its-vill said in How much would you pay for a pet?:

    I don’t care the $ amount IF it goes to charity.

    It won't.

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