Check out 31 minutes of gameplay in this demo walkthrough from Soulframe, the upcoming free-to-play open-world adventure game from Digital Extremes, the deve...
I can’t trade due to direct player interaction being difficult for me, especially when they’re negative / hostile, which happened on my first and only attempt at trading, and the game does not have an auction house.
I tried coming back, but then the stupid battlepass thingy immediately go on my nerves by dictating what I should do, then I saw the stuff that I would miss, thought about the stuff I already missed and immediately left again.
Warframe’s “BP” system is the most non-intrusive out of all games with BP that I’ve played.
I was disappointed when saw it initially as well. But on closer inspection, it is completely free, you’re not being locked to playing on a certain week to get the missions done and, what I recently found out after years of not playing the game, is that old rewards return to BP on low levels.
This essentially makes it very easy to catch up should you choose to.
About player interactions, toxicity happens, but it happens in every online game. You can’t really expect an MMO game to not have player interactions.
I too am a little anxious when dealing with people I don’t know, but it really is not that big of a deal. If you’re actually having problems with it, consider seeking advice from a specialist.
Having an auction house, although is nice from a convenience point of view, could be going against the design of the game. A bazaar type of trading has it’s own charms, and some people may prefer it. Either one is fine with me, personally.
Most of what you’ve listed don’t sound like problems with the game itself, but rather the game being just not for you. And it is normal.
And trust me, there are quite a few problems with warframe, especially for newer players. Like the story not being explicit, you being thrown into the game with no real set goal, game mechanics not being explained properly and so on, which makes you have wiki open on the side to play the game without issues.
Warframe’s “BP” system is the most non-intrusive out of all games with BP that I’ve played.
That’s cool, but irrelevant. It was the first BP game I played and left a terrible taste in my mouth. But I guess if that’s your metric then I can get your point. I play video games for way too long to get used to all those predatory tactics though. I think especially after seeing how the mmorpg genre got ruined by similar changes over the years that people tried to defend I am certainly a little more sensitive about this swapping over to other multiplayer games and even singleplayer games. Because ultimately it drives the whole gaming industry into a direction that is unhealthy and will ultimately destroy it. I would like this to not actually happen, but I guess I’m also a very opinionated person.
Most of what you’ve listed don’t sound like problems with the game itself, but rather the game being just not for you. And it is normal.
Who, in terms of players, would actually benefit from this over a system that isn’t using predatory methods? Why not make the rewards available at all times instead? There’s really no reason to have even a BP system like this to not be simply tied to local progression instead. This is just shoving the blame to the players who suffer from shitty decisions like this. Things like the wiki requirement are problematic, but minor in comparison.
What are your criteria for a mechanic being predatory?
Heed to my long explanation of what I would consider predatory or not:
In my opinion, a predatory mechanic is one that is set to make you spend more money by means of obfuscation.
So, obstacles to progression, purchases with no affirmation, currency obscuring and etc.
In this way, for example, if an item can only be bought with non-tradable premium currency, the currency is predatory. However, if the currency is tradable then it isn’t predatory because it’s main purpose lies in trading and not obfuscation.
Same way gacha is also a predatory mechanic, gambling is predatory, and loot boxes. Because you don’t explicitly know what you’re getting and how much it costs you to get the thing you want.
Therefore to me a free battlepass cannot be considered predatory, as it’s main purpose is to increase level of player engagement.
I would agree, however, that making BP permanent would make it a much nicer feature. As in, you can work towards completing previous BPs you’ve missed. Otherwise it’s kinda meh. I don’t particularly like them anyways, it’s a pretty lazy way of achieving that goal.
What are your criteria for a mechanic being predatory?
Anything that uses shady practices & dark patterns to lure / coerce you into something by triggering certain aspects of our brain. Lootboxes would be a krass example of this, as it is basically gambling, but there’s a lot of more subtle tactics too, which I already explained to a degree.
The battlepass dictates what you should do and when you should do it. No internet? Sick? Or just want to play something else? Tough luck I guess. For me this just causes me to feel pressured to play, and not even play what I want or how I want, just to get some artificial points to eventually get the rewards that the game will pack away if I am too slow to finish it in time, or simply unable to do achieve certain tasks (like some of the group content, or just other annoying open world crap).
The only benefit of having the BP sort of a rotational multiplayer feature is that everyone is doing it and its activities at the same time, but that isn’t really all that important imo, especially if you primarily play solo. But even with friends it wouldn’t really matter whether there’s help for that type of content for just one of them, just like people can help in quests they’ve already done in the past as well.
I can’t trade due to direct player interaction being difficult for me, especially when they’re negative / hostile, which happened on my first and only attempt at trading, and the game does not have an auction house.
I tried coming back, but then the stupid battlepass thingy immediately go on my nerves by dictating what I should do, then I saw the stuff that I would miss, thought about the stuff I already missed and immediately left again.
Warframe’s “BP” system is the most non-intrusive out of all games with BP that I’ve played.
I was disappointed when saw it initially as well. But on closer inspection, it is completely free, you’re not being locked to playing on a certain week to get the missions done and, what I recently found out after years of not playing the game, is that old rewards return to BP on low levels.
This essentially makes it very easy to catch up should you choose to.
About player interactions, toxicity happens, but it happens in every online game. You can’t really expect an MMO game to not have player interactions.
I too am a little anxious when dealing with people I don’t know, but it really is not that big of a deal. If you’re actually having problems with it, consider seeking advice from a specialist.
Having an auction house, although is nice from a convenience point of view, could be going against the design of the game. A bazaar type of trading has it’s own charms, and some people may prefer it. Either one is fine with me, personally.
Most of what you’ve listed don’t sound like problems with the game itself, but rather the game being just not for you. And it is normal.
And trust me, there are quite a few problems with warframe, especially for newer players. Like the story not being explicit, you being thrown into the game with no real set goal, game mechanics not being explained properly and so on, which makes you have wiki open on the side to play the game without issues.
That’s cool, but irrelevant. It was the first BP game I played and left a terrible taste in my mouth. But I guess if that’s your metric then I can get your point. I play video games for way too long to get used to all those predatory tactics though. I think especially after seeing how the mmorpg genre got ruined by similar changes over the years that people tried to defend I am certainly a little more sensitive about this swapping over to other multiplayer games and even singleplayer games. Because ultimately it drives the whole gaming industry into a direction that is unhealthy and will ultimately destroy it. I would like this to not actually happen, but I guess I’m also a very opinionated person.
Who, in terms of players, would actually benefit from this over a system that isn’t using predatory methods? Why not make the rewards available at all times instead? There’s really no reason to have even a BP system like this to not be simply tied to local progression instead. This is just shoving the blame to the players who suffer from shitty decisions like this. Things like the wiki requirement are problematic, but minor in comparison.
I’m missing one key detail here.
What are your criteria for a mechanic being predatory?
Heed to my long explanation of what I would consider predatory or not:
In my opinion, a predatory mechanic is one that is set to make you spend more money by means of obfuscation.
So, obstacles to progression, purchases with no affirmation, currency obscuring and etc.
In this way, for example, if an item can only be bought with non-tradable premium currency, the currency is predatory. However, if the currency is tradable then it isn’t predatory because it’s main purpose lies in trading and not obfuscation.
Same way gacha is also a predatory mechanic, gambling is predatory, and loot boxes. Because you don’t explicitly know what you’re getting and how much it costs you to get the thing you want.
Therefore to me a free battlepass cannot be considered predatory, as it’s main purpose is to increase level of player engagement.
I would agree, however, that making BP permanent would make it a much nicer feature. As in, you can work towards completing previous BPs you’ve missed. Otherwise it’s kinda meh. I don’t particularly like them anyways, it’s a pretty lazy way of achieving that goal.
Anything that uses shady practices & dark patterns to lure / coerce you into something by triggering certain aspects of our brain. Lootboxes would be a krass example of this, as it is basically gambling, but there’s a lot of more subtle tactics too, which I already explained to a degree.
The battlepass dictates what you should do and when you should do it. No internet? Sick? Or just want to play something else? Tough luck I guess. For me this just causes me to feel pressured to play, and not even play what I want or how I want, just to get some artificial points to eventually get the rewards that the game will pack away if I am too slow to finish it in time, or simply unable to do achieve certain tasks (like some of the group content, or just other annoying open world crap).
The only benefit of having the BP sort of a rotational multiplayer feature is that everyone is doing it and its activities at the same time, but that isn’t really all that important imo, especially if you primarily play solo. But even with friends it wouldn’t really matter whether there’s help for that type of content for just one of them, just like people can help in quests they’ve already done in the past as well.
So, it’s the same idea, but not necessarily related to money? Understandable.