this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
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Preach. So many people are fine, in fact, better than fine, paying money for cosmetics. I think p2w games are scum but at least the player gets something from that, whether it be time saved, better gun, or whatever.
Paying for a skin (which is essentially what this mount is) Nahhhhh. I've never spent a dime on either of those, but at least the former has some value imo.
Spending $90 to look cool in a videogame is something people need to get therapy for. But they're still playing on official WoW servers, so we already knew that. (Shoutouts to Whitemane and TurtleWow. Neither costs a cent monthly and both respect your time)
"Time Saved" is not a real thing though. This would imply there was an unavoidable need to spend that time to begin with, there isn't.
The game is artificial, if something is time consuming it's by design. If you're paying to "save time" in a game, you're being farmed for money, plain and simple. You ain't gaining anything, you're paying to avoid the inconvenience placed there by the people who are selling you a work around for that inconvenience. You're getting fleeced son.
The grind to get those depends on whether the player is being farmed for money. If it feels good to play, and you unlock content at a reasonable rate, that's just called progression, not farming. But if the task is repetitive, unfun, and designed to frustrate players into paying, that's farming.
That's why people shit on EA for BF2. They did the math of the grind and loot boxes, and it came out so something ridiculous, like multiple hundreds of hours to unlock stuff. I used to play R6 Siege and never spent a penny. After a week or so of playing with my friends, we'd have enough in-game currency to buy a new operator. We'd all unlock new characters and try them out. Week after week, it was fun.
Paying, imo would have ruined that experience because the gameplay is what made it fun. Forcing us to use the ops we chose rather than having a full roster to pick whatever we wanted. Felt almost like deck-building. We were progressing, not farming.
The caveat is that the new ops tended to be OP. I think the devs probably do it intentionally. This is the P2W part. People could pay day 1 and get the operator with the overtuned kit. They paid to save time, because they want to be the first to use the shiny new toy.
But again, like I said. I'll never spend money on either, but at least that person paying is gaining something, an advantage, time saved, instant gratification, more time learning the op. The person buying a pink gun gets ... a digital pink gun?
It seems we disagree on the value of things. For me at least, somebody had to be vaguely creative to create the fucking blue 20$ skin, and the value is not in the non-existent item, but in the very real aesthetic and social experience of owning that skin, a social symbol, like art in your wall. Useless by itself, but it makes you feel things and let's you say something about yourself to strangers.
To me that is understandable. Like buying AirPods instead of cheapo earbuds just because they look cool and you want to look preppy with your friends. (Notice the extra cost is not about the sound or the function of the thing, but a out the social value, which I'd say is still value)
Monetized grind is the exact opposite. You are working to have the privilege of not paying money for the better experience that is already there. People are getting paid to make things WORSE for you, so that you pay money to avoid-displeasure rather than enjoying something new, even if it's literally just enjoying fleeting vanity.
Paying to skip is not saving me time. They are giving me a worse quality product and then making me pay to solve the problem that they have a financial incentive to make worse. This is like thinking you're getting a deal when phone sellers remove the cable from the box. You're are not, you're being given a free problem, that you can pay even more to solve.