Are all modern mobile games turning into torture devices?
JESUSCHRIST
Member Posts: 665 ★★★
The moment Free to Play games became a thing in gaming history is when game developers had to think of other ways to monetize the game
Whether through selling stuff that is dependent on RNG, making the game so difficult that you have to use tonnes of revives to defeat a new boss, selling coveted trophy champions or rank up materials that will give you an advantage over other players in the game
When you buy a full price game in the past and complete the game, that's it and you move on to another game but now every mobile game wants to extend their longevity and become an infinity game where there are monthly updates and your progress in game is saved in the servers forever which can be considered to be a good thing
The other side of the coin is that it never ends, either players end up quitting or they continue playing until your children grow up old enough to inherit your 1,300+++ MCOC champions LOL
My son, I have nothing valuable in this world except my 7* Juggernaut and he will roll over your opponents like a M1A2 Abram tank in Battlegrounds
Whether through selling stuff that is dependent on RNG, making the game so difficult that you have to use tonnes of revives to defeat a new boss, selling coveted trophy champions or rank up materials that will give you an advantage over other players in the game
When you buy a full price game in the past and complete the game, that's it and you move on to another game but now every mobile game wants to extend their longevity and become an infinity game where there are monthly updates and your progress in game is saved in the servers forever which can be considered to be a good thing
The other side of the coin is that it never ends, either players end up quitting or they continue playing until your children grow up old enough to inherit your 1,300+++ MCOC champions LOL
My son, I have nothing valuable in this world except my 7* Juggernaut and he will roll over your opponents like a M1A2 Abram tank in Battlegrounds
Are all modern mobile games turning into torture devices? 34 votes
Yes, they already called it Epoch of Pain so it's self admitting
20%
7 votes
No, what better way to relax after work than to play MCOC, Epoch of Pain is optional
61%
21 votes
Others, please elaborate
17%
6 votes
5
Comments
Only Unitman and Reviveman can handle him
The idea of free to play gaming goes back to essentially the beginning of PC-era video games, but the modern business model traces back to the early 2000s. At the time most western online games were subscription supported. When the free to play model began to appear, it began to displace subscription based games because of its obvious advantages. Free to play games could suck all the oxygen out of the room because a huge number of players could play for free, and from that large pool of players a game could more easily find people willing to pay to support the game.
The idea that free to play gaming was somehow imposed upon the games industry and game developers then had to scramble to figure out how to make it work is nonsensical. It was the game developers who figured out how to make it work, and that caused it to gain traction in the online game space. And by "make it work" the reason why it largely displaced subscription supported games is because, for all that it *seems* like people hate it, it is the free to play games that almost everyone gravitates towards. For people who want to play for free, they can play whatever they want without worrying about spending money. The vast majority of the free to play games playerbase is composed of people who do not spend. And the spenders find there's more to do in free to play monetized games than in subscription games, because they can get more for their money. It is really talking heads on Youtube and angry people on online forums that claim to hate the model: everyone else votes with their feet and their wallets.
I think the one place where there is a general consensus that the model has issues, not just among the loud minority but among actual game players, is where you do not have a free to play model monetized with microtransactions, but rather games with an actual (and significant cost) that are then hyper monetized on top of that cost. You can make the argument that charging players fifty bucks for a green doohickey is a reasonable price to pay for fifty other players playing completely for free. The whales spend and the broke get to play a game without paying money and everyone wins. When you're buying a game for sixty bucks and then on top of that you have to spend hundreds of dollars more to play all of it after you've spent the cash is probably the Rubicon for a lot more players than the online free to play model.
As the OP rightly notes we used to buy a game once and that was it. Over time that has evolved to more purchases throughout the life of the game (microtransactions?). Yet this isn't only the case with mobile games. Console games and PC games have evolved in similar ways.
However, I don't think the free to play or non-spending aspect of this new game models has already died. People choose to spend on games all the time. The choice is that of time or money. Which resource to consume, or how much of each.
KABAM doesn't seem to acknowledge time as a consumable resource in MCoC (and gaming in general) but it most certainly is. People often spend money to reduce the time they need to otherwise spend waiting for energy or timers to expire (People also spend on consumable resources like revives and health pots and crystals I acknowledge).
I used to spend a lot of money (to me) on MCoC. Not anymore. If I can't complete a piece of content I won't use in game resources until I'm ready. I keep grinding for what I can get and units for those offers that come up in game (non-monetary).
Is it likely that MCoC has got to the point where it's impossible to replicate the pay to win experience as a free-to-play player? Yes, I feel like we're there now. In part that's why I've stopped spending money. But that's isolated to MCoC (for me). Not all games are there yet.
I do think it's important to support a game and it's staff if I enjoy playing it though. Within everyone's own means. There are other mobile games that I play that I've financially supported once, yet don't have the need/desire to keep throwing money into. I play what I can and leave the rest for others with more money and skill.
Being free-to-play or a non-spender is alive and well with me
I don’t believe the game is a competition or a contest for that matter,..i look at the game as challenging myself.
I do what i want l,..when i want, …IF i want.
I didn’t bother clearing one milestone of this last eop but cleared all the milestones in the previous one cause that’s what i felt like doing.
I did this Saga incursions and found it pretty easy and enjoyable,..despite skipping some other ones.
Instead of getting to GC in battlegrounds next season,..i am going to collect my five wins and tank, ( because i simply wan’t a break from it ).
I only have one of the 7* deathless champs and didn’t bother targeting them because i don’t care for them and don’t feel left out not having them.
…The point is,…the game is what you make it ,..how you perceive it and what you want it to be for your own reasons.
MCOC has by far the best free to play experience of any online game I am aware of. In the literal sense there's no way to "replicate the pay to win experience as a free-to-play player" but that's always been true, and is true for all microtransaction supported online games. However, MCOC has the fewest paywalls imposed on free to play players. Players have demonstrated that there is no pay wall - and even no grind wall - in MCOC for progression by speed running to Valiant in just a couple weeks. This does not mean average players can do this, but it proves unambiguously that there is no need to spend and no need to excessively grind to reach the top progression tier of the game. If there were, speed runs would be mathematically impossible.The most competitive game mode is Battlegrounds, and most of the BG players are completely free to play. They have to be: during the Battleground Blitz there were over 300k participants. We don't have 300k spenders in the game. There were almost 100k players that entered GC, and it is unlikely we even have that many spenders in the game. Free to play players are not just lurking around in the gutters of the game: they are participating in, and competitive in all game modes.
While spending does offer advantages, if spending was the dominant influence on progress and competitiveness in the game I would expect the top of the BG and AW leaderboards to be a revolving door of the top spenders of the game at that time. I would expect to see constant shake ups as new whales entered the game and displaced players who were not spending as much. But I don't see a lot of that happening.
You can get to Valiant for free, you can do all the end game content for free, and you can be competitive in all game modes for free. You might not be a top 10 player, but only ten players are, and spending doesn't seem to exclusively define who they are. Everything everyone has now is accessible with a reasonable amount of time and zero dollars spent to a brand new player who starts playing today.
Not only could it be much worse for free to play players, it is difficult to conceive of how it could be any better. The fact that you yourself are now an admitted free to play player and the game lets you be is itself a testament to how well it treats free to play players.
So I just share what I observed with games, so the Free to Play revolution "started" with League of Legends (LoL)
There were a few competing games of the same game mode, MOBA
The other competitor sold the full game at a price while LoL kept their game free with micro transactions selling cosmetic skins (not pay to win)
Naturally everyone flocked to the free game LoL, the other competitor did not get recurring revenue since the full game was sold at a price and that's it, there was no recurring revenue for monthly updates for the game, on the other hand LoL was able to afford monthly updates with new champions bcos of micro transactions selling skins for champions
The Free to Play model won the competition, the other game went out of business literally, players left for the free game with monthly new updates and new champions
Free to Play model has its merits, not disputing anything here
MCOC is a great game, I agree fully, not every free game out there allows grinding of premium currency
I played 9 out of 10 years for MCOC, no complaints about the game generally
I observed the general population talking about a few complaints here and there, the bugs, the AI etc, I do have a high tolerance for bugs and difficult AI
Still a great game, Epoch of Pain is optional, maybe not for me when it releases, I'm a 6.7 million valiant but I can't torture myself anymore, I rather watch the youtubers do it and watch them getting tortured by Ares, it's similar to watching people eat extremely spicy wings on youtube and getting burnt by the hot chilli
This thread is meant to create discussions about the game, I thoroughly enjoy the social aspect of the game which is to create meaningful discussions in the forums other than just grinding the game non stop
Great player community at MCOC, hope everyone gets what they want from the game