My experience:
I do the game sharing trick on xbox where you and a friend can mutually access both of your digital libraries. Preordered collector’s edition, which included 5 days of early access before launch. Blizzard had implemented a special access control on the server side which checked for a unique collector’s edition license. My friend could download and launch the game using my license but couldn’t login during early access. I refunded my purchase because the point of the extra cost was invalidated by that.
I later bought the standard edition. My account still had all the preorder and collector’s edition bonuses, including MTX currency & a battle pass token. Said token was later redeemed by mistake via Blizzard’s dark pattern implementation at the start of S1. There was some backlash about that at the time which was certainly valid, but personally I didn’t feel affected because I got it at no extra cost.
I’ve played for 1000s of hours since but never spent the free in-game currency. I had never seen another player in-game using MTX cosmetics until the wings items were recently added as preorder bonuses for the upcoming expansion. It’s not surprising that only 15% of the revenue came from MTX because the paid cosmetics are pointless, expensive and they aren’t substantially better than the free ones. Using transmog at all robs the player of any sense of cosmetic progression. Paid portal skins are kinda cool the first time you see them, but the free activity-specific ones like for infernal hordes are cool too.
I’m left confused at why someone would boast about these figures given they’re evidence of not having implemented any solid post-launch monetisation strategy, and more generally the half-baked nature of the post-launch development for the game. The MTX is purely for vanity and it doesn’t even achieve that. The skins might as well be a dork sign. I wouldn’t be surprised if their revenue figures included my original purchase as well.
tl;dr my read is that this dude has done more to unintentionally subvert blizzard’s MTX sales than he’s done to generate them
My brother plays a lot of D4 himself and even though he does spend money on the game for the battle passes (I think), he never bought skins because he feels the same way you do: your characters look less like they’re your own because the armour you equip is not visible. Then again, I’m wondering what else they could sell that isn’t cosmetics. Change the way spells look maybe?
From a developer perspective, tonnes of stuff. Shortcuts, power (edit: see Diablo Immortal for some live examples). From a gamer perspective, it’s really the ideal scenario in this day and age, but Blizzard’ll cop hate all the same
Shortcuts in the way that WoW handles it, ie. instant leveling, or literal shortcuts like waypoints on map? Afaik, both exist, right? At least you can skip the campaign.
And would including power in some way not lead to P2W?
I guess it depends how aggressive your monetisation is. I feel like Blizzard was super greedy already, looking at Overwatch’s 20€ skins, but studios like Riot sure don’t make it more realistic for mtx to become cheaper in the future. People seem to be fine paying 20€ for a single equipment transmog for some reason.
My experience: I do the game sharing trick on xbox where you and a friend can mutually access both of your digital libraries. Preordered collector’s edition, which included 5 days of early access before launch. Blizzard had implemented a special access control on the server side which checked for a unique collector’s edition license. My friend could download and launch the game using my license but couldn’t login during early access. I refunded my purchase because the point of the extra cost was invalidated by that.
I later bought the standard edition. My account still had all the preorder and collector’s edition bonuses, including MTX currency & a battle pass token. Said token was later redeemed by mistake via Blizzard’s dark pattern implementation at the start of S1. There was some backlash about that at the time which was certainly valid, but personally I didn’t feel affected because I got it at no extra cost.
I’ve played for 1000s of hours since but never spent the free in-game currency. I had never seen another player in-game using MTX cosmetics until the wings items were recently added as preorder bonuses for the upcoming expansion. It’s not surprising that only 15% of the revenue came from MTX because the paid cosmetics are pointless, expensive and they aren’t substantially better than the free ones. Using transmog at all robs the player of any sense of cosmetic progression. Paid portal skins are kinda cool the first time you see them, but the free activity-specific ones like for infernal hordes are cool too.
I’m left confused at why someone would boast about these figures given they’re evidence of not having implemented any solid post-launch monetisation strategy, and more generally the half-baked nature of the post-launch development for the game. The MTX is purely for vanity and it doesn’t even achieve that. The skins might as well be a dork sign. I wouldn’t be surprised if their revenue figures included my original purchase as well.
tl;dr my read is that this dude has done more to unintentionally subvert blizzard’s MTX sales than he’s done to generate them
My brother plays a lot of D4 himself and even though he does spend money on the game for the battle passes (I think), he never bought skins because he feels the same way you do: your characters look less like they’re your own because the armour you equip is not visible. Then again, I’m wondering what else they could sell that isn’t cosmetics. Change the way spells look maybe?
From a developer perspective, tonnes of stuff. Shortcuts, power (edit: see Diablo Immortal for some live examples). From a gamer perspective, it’s really the ideal scenario in this day and age, but Blizzard’ll cop hate all the same
Shortcuts in the way that WoW handles it, ie. instant leveling, or literal shortcuts like waypoints on map? Afaik, both exist, right? At least you can skip the campaign.
And would including power in some way not lead to P2W?
I guess it depends how aggressive your monetisation is. I feel like Blizzard was super greedy already, looking at Overwatch’s 20€ skins, but studios like Riot sure don’t make it more realistic for mtx to become cheaper in the future. People seem to be fine paying 20€ for a single equipment transmog for some reason.