The really sad thing is that Dice is a decent company that clearly puts a lot of love into their games, and their reward is seeing it get dragged through the mud by EA and tarnish their image and the viability of their game. EA can blow me.
Sometimes the developer does get fucked by the publisher being a bunch of scumbags, though, and that does suck. Bandai Namco is turning into Japanese EA -- or at least Japanese Activision -- and they hose their developers regularly.
I'm the kind of person that thinks Blighttown in Dark Souls has a decent framerate and don't care about it on the 360. This game makes my fucking eyes bleed because of the horrible stuttering and vibration of everything.
I had to just stare at walls sometimes during my first Blight Town run just cause the frame rate drops were hurting my eyes. Stuff like that usually doesn't bother me much, but that time it did.
fucking me too, i wanna be able to enjoy star wars games again, what the fuck both this and the last battlefront have been skips, fucking imagine a 2017 where fucking battlefront is now no longer a renowned name in the star wars lineup
"This may have actually ruined loot crates for everyone." Well, it's about time EA did something _good_ for the industry, then. I mean, it was while being their typical loathsome scumbag selves, but there's no other version of EA, so I'll take what we can get.
this isn't as good as you might think it is, quite a few games survive on loot boxes as their main income. for a game like overwatch, people who pay for loot boxes basically subsidize all future content and blizzard makes all new heroes and maps free due to the costs being covered by loot boxes so they dont have to split the player base through expansion packs or dlcs. for something like dota 2, it is very possible that they go with a model that forces you to unlock characters by grinding or cash if they didnt have such a lucrative crate system. so if loot boxes were to go, you will begin to see a lot more dlc and a lot more straight up buying power albeit not locked behind an rng box
All of what you described doesn't really negatively affect players, though. Heck, Rocket League makes a fuckton off of its loot crates, but it also sells a shitload beyond that, and its DLC for flat-out buying stuff is super reasonably priced, no more than a couple of bucks for a different car. They also allow you to trade for the keys other people buy with actual money, so you're not locked out of that content if you don't want to pay, as long as you're willing to play the game's secondhand market. On that note, I haven't given 'em a dime, and my cars are tricked out with tons of dumb cosmetic nonsense just by -exploiting- trading with those that did. Granted, with a couple of exceptions, none of the cars available in the DLC is available though crates, but I sure as hell wouldn't mind it all becoming DLC if it's similarly reasonable in price. It's not like they won't sell; it's just that it's more lucrative to prey on the dopes that'll drop hundreds of dollars to make a stupid skull come out when they score a goal. And even ignoring my "fuck loot crates and the people that employ them" stance, don't act like these developers will suddenly go hungry. Again, the loot crate system doesn't exist because they wouldn't make money otherwise; it exists to make them more money than it should.
+MiaowGaiGar Haha. A very interesting view I agree on. I was one of the dumb people who thought "Lootcrates/boxes are fine if they only contain cosmetics because if it doesn't affect the gamplay it won't affect me" and oh man I deserve to be called a retarded piece of shit for thinking like that. Of course it hurts and affects me and everyone else even when it only contains cosmetics. Of course it does. And the big thing about it is that lootboxes is a form of gambling. The game is advertised to kids and the game encourage everyone to gamble which is illegal. Other than that, this bullshit affects the quality of games too. I'm glad EA went FAR BEYOND our threshold. It really forced people to finally do something about this. I really hope this will be considered as a form of gambling and honestly it is gambling so it should, and then I want it to get banned completely from gaming. The game industry have had this toxic for far too long. It needs to be removed.
It's a form of exploiting the consumer; it's as simple as that. They wave crap like "it's cosmetic only!" or "you don't HAVE to buy them!" just to prevent outrage like this game ultimately caused, because either way it exists just to make certain kinds of people pay shit tons that they simply wouldn't if you could buy it outright. There's no value whatsoever to the player; it's a practice that serves _solely_ to benefit the developer, and it's one of the dirtiest practices out there. There are plenty of ways they could make it _less_ dirty -- being allowed to pick from the pool of items after trying a _reasonable_ amount of attempts, for instance, or being able to trade in for an item you want, and less fucking robbery in terms of pricing regardless -- but again, the aim isn't to benefit the player, as such a thing might get them to stop spending money after a point, so they won't do it unless they're backed into a corner. Some people get off on gambling; I get that. Look at the videos of nerds overreacting to getting something from one of these things for proof of that. But they're also a fraction of the playerbase, and lootboxes/gachas are designed to target and profit from them; those of us who don't want to put up with that crap shouldn't be the collateral damage. You shouldn't be subject to a lesser experience solely because you don't want to waste your money on a dice roll, and it _is_ a waste of money. I hope this is the start of these shitheads finally getting some regulation clamped down on them.
Jayness If your business is reliant on loot crate horseshit to stay in the red then you deserve to go bankrupt. There is *no* reason that, say, Blizzard couldn't just sell people credits to buy skins they *actually* want besides that it causes their customers to waste less money. (And it does not cost them a billion dollars a year to maintain that game, they're making teenager gambling money hand-over-fist with that shit.)
Are Disney able to sue EA for damages against their brand if The Last Jedi underporforms now that the Star Wars name is associated with disastrous PR and corporate money grubbing?
Most people who are going to watch the next Star Wars don't give enough of a fuck about a Star Wars video game's PR to let it influence whether they watch it. Hell, most people who are _into video games_ don't give enough of a fuck.
It would be more likely that they could sue EA for damaging the reputation of the Battlefont IP as opposed to the film franchise. As this story is "big" but at the same time it's not that big, like general movie audiences would be completely unaware of this situation as you need to be into gaming to have this on your radar.
MiaowGaiGar I think he means the mandolorian war, Revans backstory. If that is it, I'm totally down. If he means a kotor adaptation, no need, kotor is fantastic.
Its such a shame that EA destroyed everyones goodwill towards Battlefront 2 (2017). From what I seen of the gameplay (outsidexbox mostly) it looked quite competantly made. Not a masterpeice but a decently solid shooter that people will have fun with and get lots of mileage out of.
Just pirate the game. Don't give EA your money. Shame about Dice but EA was going to toss them out no mater what. That's what they do with all their developers
o blizzard, dont think we dont no about them expensive ass coop commanders in starcraft 2, or how stingy as fuck u are with gold in hearthstone i do really liek blizzard but this just makes look even more like the snake in the grass
+Erik Williams Yeah. Ironically enough the worst gaming company ever created may have done exactly what the gaming industry badly needed which is to have its toxic removed, *unintentional* though. I will never praise EA for this but I will see this event as a positive thing if Belgium manage to mark this as gambling and bans it from games having it.
I can't wait until loot-boxes are gone for good. Whether purchased with in-game or real-life currency doesn't matter to me, I don't want any reward to be random.
+Hasan Abdul-Jabbaar Yes precisely but let's not stop there. Luckily Belgium is working on tackling this problem and it may end up with lootboxes/crates being completely banned from games. That is exactly the goal we need to achieve. Not buying the game isn't gonna fix it if we don't remove the problem.
That actually is the case for once. After its release, even on Black Friday, there was still a significant amount of BFII games left on the shelves. Their whored out and abused cash cow didn't sell out on Black fucking Friday. If that isn't a message I don't know what is
Guess what? Loot boxes do need to be made illegal. They're scummy and prey on those with addictive personalities. It's nice to see Pat actually acknowledging they're a problem after he did a FUCKING STREAM OF JUST OPENING THEM.
I wouldn't feel bad for the developers after all this if the game doesn't sell because they don't get paid based on how much the game sells. They make a standard salary and have already been paid for their work.
I know because I'm a games developer and have worked for EA in the past in their Texas office. Fock the upper management and owners of EA cuz they treat their employees like shit for a video game company. Most video game companies are decking amazing to work at but EA is easily the worst game company I've ever worked for and I've worked for quite a few over the past 10 years
"It like EA threw down 500 different loot boxes, mixed them up, and told you to unbox them all in under one hour, or else EA would lock you into a freezer filled with flesh eating cockroaches."
Rogue Squadron Collection on the Switch is not going to happen because Factor 5 is not part of EA. Also it only affected the Credits you got from beating the campaign.
FIFA Ultimate Team player jump out from those pay to win loot boxes, the source of all evil. This is what EA thought they could get away with it. So tragic that the beloved FIFA is now nothing more than glorified football gambling. And people pay money in s hope to get the ultimate players.
Consider the idea that Disney was in on the ballsy monetisation of BF2. No other developer went this far with microtransactions before this. EA breaks out the spreadsheets and shows off how much money a game with 14 million sales could potentially make by being developed around the microtransaction incentive model. Disney is not the paragon of virtue but they are smart enough to have that be the general perception they maintain so EA/Dice gets to take the bullet for this one.
"no other developer went this far with microtransactions before". dungeon keeper mobile. disney isn't some paragon, but i can promise you, they didn't invent these practices. at worst, their involvement was "yep, alright, plan approved, when's lunch?"
Should have added --- In a triple A game that you have already paid at least 60.00 for. You can promise that? You don't think Disney loves money just as much as EA? Call me a tinfoil hat wearing guy but it seems odd that EA completely lost it's mind and went all in on microtransactions in BF2 while other developers had been smart about 'spinkling' it in the games avoiding major scandals. EA ruined it for everyone ---- so in some ass backwords manner they actually may have ended up improving gaming due to the fallout of there greed.
Matt Graham that's exactly what happened. and the problem is, you're giving EA far too much credit. most game publishers don't plan, they react and flail. don't get me wrong, disney is scum too, but similarly to apple, disney is elegant in its use of the corrupting iron fist. this isn't disney, this is a publisher seeing what they can get away with. and remember, since EA has a proven history of doing this kind of thing with dungeon keeper mobile, there's no reason to assume they wouldn't fuck up a $60 game all on their own. EA has a history of ruining games without assistance, or did you forget about sim city being "always online", having less space and fewer options than previous titles?
Remember when video games were games and not services? You could buy a complete video game off the shelf and didn't have to worry about DLC or unlocks or microtransactions or loot crates or bullshit? I do. I remember it.
people's breaking point was learning that your options to play as darth vader in a star wars game were: grind for 40 hours, cough up more money or get a lucky random drop. and since nerds are nerds, you touch their precious star wars and they will rip your world asunder.
EA really fucked themselves on this one. Not that it's anything surprising. It is a bit of a shame though; I played the starship assault in the beta and it was really fun. I'm not gonna buy the game after this shit, though!
K. Flynn let's be real here, you're almost completely exempt from blame if EA's attached to your game in some way. they're like a virus, they just corrupt and necrotize anything they touch.
I don't feel sorry for the devs at all. They knew who they were getting into bed with when DICE got sold, and what their track record is like. They already got their paychecks, so their work's been paid for.
Nightweaver1 Yeah it's a stone-cold bummer that the game ended up how it did. But it's exactly the sort of thing that people have been warning against since the dawn of minibuys. It was kind of inevitable.
