An annoying trend (mobile gaming)

jmervyn

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Mar 24, 2020
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So I suppose this could have fit under the "Non-Blizzard Game Discussion" but it's more an observation than specific analysis of specific games, Bliz or otherwise.

Am I wrong in thinking that there's an uptick in "pay-to-win" on mobile gaming, supported by non-American players, particularly in the far East?

I remember playing Ikariam (German) about a year ago, and enjoying it to some extent at first, but rapidly souring on it once certain guilds would purchase "teleport" function to raid foreign strongholds. There's no tactical skill involved in paying for godlike capability, and I remember thinking that would cause the game to fail attracting new players.

More recently I played an "adult" game called King of Wasteland, which was essentially Ikariam with lewds & zombies, and found much the same pattern: powerful clans spending real money to be able to molest n00bs for pennies worth of in-game loot.

I played a kingdom game some months ago, and while there was less of an anti-social beat-down concept, it still completely revolved around giving you a couple of tokens towards high-level heroes and then demanding payment to complete the acquisition.

At least Neverwinter allowed a modicum of gameplay, even if you never bothered to pay for the in-game keys to open all the apparently promising loot boxes you picked up.

So am I just a cheap jackhole who thinks it makes better sense to give my waitress a decent tip or take my son out for ice cream than spend real money on virtual boosts that don't accomplish anything but helping you bully fellow players?

Let me be clear - I *SUPPORT* the concept of micropayments, and always did - it's that my idea of a decent game is something like DDO where a player can muddle along in 1st gear for years without spending a dime on content, even if it gets a bit repetitious & grindy.

Opinions? Rotten fruit?
 
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Am I wrong in thinking that there's an uptick in "pay-to-win" on mobile gaming, supported by non-American players, particularly in the far East?
I thought pay-to-win supported by non-American players particularly in the far east was the mobile gaming market. ;)
 
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The Market is always the money. The activity (in this thread, online gaming) is purely incidental and of little importance in the scheme of things.

Thirty years ago, I thought that I had witnessed peak Money Replacing Thing of Value as a Thing of Value but the past few years have taught me better.
 
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Thirty years ago, I thought that I had witnessed peak Money Replacing Thing of Value as a Thing of Value but the past few years have taught me better.
Yeah, now the thing to do is take all that money you saved up and trade it for imaginary currency that you can use to buy imaginary cards packs that might or might not help you in your imaginary football game that you have to buy a new version of every year even though it's literally identical to the previous version.
 
I thought pay-to-win supported by non-American players particularly in the far east was the mobile gaming market. ;)
Sad but very possibly true. I don't know whether the bulk of these games are produced by Korean software firms (I don't believe the Japanese are at the top of their game nowadays), or if the games are rip-offs of Korean software marketed by the Chinese back to Korea & Japan.

This must warm the couple of OTF fascist hearts: my making cultural references that can be construed as RAAAACISSSS. Knock yourself out, kids.

That said, it does pose an interesting question - is my disgust at the "pay-to-bully" segment of this an actual observation of Western cultural change, or is it ignorant observation of the "Oriental" norm of amoral sensibilities (dog-eat-dog so to speak) being expressed by an international market?

By the bye, I never liked "Blue Moon" clan from {Crowbar Swing} because they specialized in Burritozon kills & other similar cheats, but I also recall being scandalized when a PUG team member PK'ed me on America's Army purely because I'd drawn the Barrett sniper rifle & he wanted it.

As to Lozzy's observation that money is power, it also happens to be the case that water is wet. It's just quite surprising that so many people are eager to surrender their wealth and even earning power for entertainment, and then whine later about how impoverished they are.
 
Well mobile games aside, unlike the west, pay to win has pretty much always been fundamental to games within the Asian markets. I don't know if it's just a culture thing or if they just never had much choice or what, but they do seem to be more tolerant of it. Western markets tend to put up a lot of resistance, even with EA doing their damnedest to squeeze it into every aspect of their titles. A lot of other companies toe the line as close as they possibly can, but they get a lot of backlash for doing it so they try not to actually cross it.
 
Well mobile games aside, unlike the west, pay to win has pretty much always been fundamental to games within the Asian markets. I don't know if it's just a culture thing or if they just never had much choice or what, but they do seem to be more tolerant of it. Western markets tend to put up a lot of resistance, even with EA doing their damnedest to squeeze it into every aspect of their titles. A lot of other companies toe the line as close as they possibly can, but they get a lot of backlash for doing it so they try not to actually cross it.
Interesting. I remember reading an informed cultural observation that Asians don't really grasp the stock market or banking in their operational sense, instead viewing stocks as gambling and banks as a vault.

I'm sure that's a grossly stereotypical exaggeration, but it's fascinating to hear my wife's Chinese Christian friend confirming many of what are derided by Western Progressives as bigoted conspiracy theories & what not.
 
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Western progressives, particularly the "woke" tend to be some of the least informed about people in other cultures, so that's not surprising, exaggeration or not. Makes sense when you remember that they mostly consist of collage kids who think they're experts on everything after taking one semester of Psyc 101.
 
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ROFLMAO! I've found myself repeatedly quoting Dr. Sowell:
Dr. Thomas Sowell said:
I think we're raising whole generations who regard facts as more or less optional.
We have kids in elementary school who are being urged to take stands on political issues, to write letters to congressmen and presidents about nuclear energy.
They're not a decade old, and they're being thrown these kinds of questions that can absorb the lifetime of a very brilliant and learned man. And they're being taught that it's important to have views, and they're not being taught that it's important to know what you're talking about.
It's important to hear the opposite viewpoint, and more important to learn how to distinguish why viewpoint A and viewpoint B are different, and which one has the most evidence or logic behind it. They disregard that. They hear something, they hear some rhetoric, and they run with it.

In some ways, it's similar to these young gamers (particularly this "pay-to-bully" crowd) thinking that because they are able to coax a "win" from a computer game that they understand tactics & strategy. I still remember pouring over the "Advanced Squad Leader" ruleset from Avalon Hill, and playing some ancient Army-issue wargame with a German name that I can't even find on Wikipedia.

Kids these days...
 
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In some ways, it's similar to these young gamers (particularly this "pay-to-bully" crowd) thinking that because they are able to coax a "win" from a computer game that they understand tactics & strategy.
I've noticed some disturbing trends on gaming forums the last few years that would corroborate this idea. A greater prevalence of people who think it's following the meta that makes them skilled, for example. Particularly when that meta abuses mechanics in such a way as to remove a great deal of difficulty from the game. Another example would be a growing number of people going to great lengths to defend what are clearly exploits or bad behavior, going so far as to blame the developers for their own actions. This would be the "If they wanted me to stop at the crosswalk then they would have put down spike strips" defense.
 
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[...]

As to Lozzy's observation that money is power, it also happens to be the case that water is wet. It's just quite surprising that so many people are eager to surrender their wealth and even earning power for entertainment, and then whine later about how impoverished they are.
I would refer Merv to Queen Cersei's apt observation to Little Finger one time, "Power is power".

My point regarding money is, in every respect, in modern society, "the money" becomes the most important aspect of everything that is done, no matter how desirable or necessary the activity itself.

In a previous life, I once remarked to colleagues that we could save much more money, in terms of overheads, if we folded up the organisation. This would reduce our running costs to zero, efficiently and effectively, compared to the half-assed measures currently being contemplated.

The point, as always, was lost on them. You see, the goal was no longer the organisation's activities and outcomes, it was all about the "costs". Minutiae >> Core Values
 
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A greater prevalence of people who think it's following the meta that makes them skilled, for example. Particularly when that meta abuses mechanics in such a way as to remove a great deal of difficulty from the game.
Yes, the "Min/Max" concept even poisons games like Dungeons & Dragons Online, though happily not to the same degree. For every snooty person who won't play with you because you don't have the flavor-of-the-month build, there's at least one who will (assuming one is not a prick).
Another example would be a growing number of people going to great lengths to defend what are clearly exploits or bad behavior, going so far as to blame the developers for their own actions. This would be the "If they wanted me to stop at the crosswalk then they would have put down spike strips" defense.
That's more along the lines of my observations. The 'clan' which had regularly abused me daily for 'lunch money' started assaulting me en masse claiming they were the victims of *MY* bullying one of their members. I had caught one of them with his pants down and was serving up a little (VERY little) reciprocity - when I responded, they claimed that I was being a baby and that they had all been through the same sort of thing back in the day.

This was unlikely in the extreme. Not only were these the sort of people using dupe accounts to fatten their primary, and were exploiting the freebees given away in game, but they were overwhelmingly the dominant 'clan' and would have had no rivals. Claiming I needed to toughen up and continue to allow them to violate me routinely is an asinine view of what should conceptually be "fun". Needless to say, I've uninstalled the game.
 
My point regarding money is, in every respect, in modern society, "the money" becomes the most important aspect of everything that is done, no matter how desirable or necessary the activity itself.
I could quote assorted scripture to point out the inevitability of that trend, but in the long run you might assume I was calling you a pig. :geek:
In a previous life, I once remarked to colleagues that we could save much more money, in terms of overheads, if we folded up the organisation. This would reduce our running costs to zero, efficiently and effectively, compared to the half-assed measures currently being contemplated.

The point, as always, was lost on them. You see, the goal was no longer the organisation's activities and outcomes, it was all about the "costs". Minutiae >> Core Values
I remember reading someone, perhaps the legendary Michael Crichton, who mentioned this trend. Might have been in Rising Sun? The concept was that companies were obsessed with the appearance of the "quarterlies", and the best way to improve those was to cut jobs or expenditures. Doing so on a continual basis makes sense to the pea-of-brain types.

I don't recall if the same point was made by "Milton" or echoed in "Office Space" but it could have been. I know there was a "Dilbert" strip out there to the same effect.
 
I could quote assorted scripture to point out the inevitability of that trend, but in the long run you might assume I was calling you a pig. :geek:

[...]
Just as long as you do call me.
 
MTs in a $60-70 PC/console game is outrageous enough but in the mobile sphere, they're downright predatory. If you want to burn cash on xp boosters and "time savers" in freemium games, knock yourself out - just always remember that you're enabling publishers to pull this crap.

I'll stick to Retroarch and play real games. I got burned on Dungeon Keeper Mobile some years ago. Never. Again.
 
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