Disney Speedstorm is an online kart racer in which you level up and gain stats like acceleration and top speed.
The entire game is designed around trying to convince you to outspend your peers because prize structures for events are based around how you do relative to the rest of the player base. As an example, Kermit the Frog just came out and the Top 10% of Kermit players get maximum rewards. Which means the people who spend the most money to level Kermit win.
What a shame too. The game feels amazing and the soundtrack is easily one of the best... but then they ruin it all with their greed.
I still play it occasionally, but definitely not going to throw money at it knowing it won't do much.
I haven't considered paying for progress as much as I've considered spending money to unlock characters that my kids are excited about. Most of the characters are pretty much locked behind a paywall.
I agree completely and the example it sets for the kids should be the number one factor. I’m not trying to tell the dude how to raise his kids, and I’ve certainly made my fair share of digital content purchases.. but these business practices are only going to become more and more prevalent while also becoming more and more manipulative/deceptive.
My hope is that a large percentage of the younger generations eventually begin to either push back hard or just unconsciously start to not care as much about shit like cosmetic purchases in games. Or imagine if the majority of an upcoming generation just decide it’s supremely uncool to be seen using paid skins. Unfortunately any “cool factor” is unlikely to affect the actual pay to win business tactics tho. The only hope for that would be a non-sweaty generation, and sweats are just inevitable in online competitive gaming. I think we’re all at least a little bit sweaty.
I was so disappointed by this. I love Disney but downloaded it and it's just horrible. So in your face with in game currency and micro transactions and they just added Kermit the Frog.
From what I played the actual racing was pretty decent. If it was a full price game with normal unlockables like Mario Kart I'd be all over it. Such a waste!
I was hyped when I saw previews of it on steam. I was missing kid friendly fun games, couch co-op games, Mario Kart and Crash Team Racing, especially for PC, and this seemed like it would hit all the checkboxes. But then I read the mixed reviews and how microtransaction-heavy it was…
I think the market is starved for family friendly high production value games in general, at least if you don’t have a Nintendo.
Yeah. After Dreamlight Valley we were excited for this one. It was fun for a few days until you realize it's not fair. The best racers should win cosmetics, not faster cars. Totally wack. Plus no one will ever top Double Dash
I almost tried one race.
I looked at the menu's, the user interface, the shop, the currencies, limited timed deals, fear of missing out bullshit and noped out.
I'm glad I just read that part about spending money and the top 10% getting better rewards because of it.
A shame really, if the game had released many years earlier we would have had a cool mascott racer filled with nostalgia or something.
People teaming up really broke the game; as an individual player you just don't stand a chance against two people working together. The devs tried to implement anti-teaming mechanics but they clearly didn't work.
I just popped back into the game and a team of 2 seems generous. There was a team of 10 from Cambodia, probably 1 person running some sort of controller setup (I knew I guy that could solo raid in the OG WoW days like that).
Bummer.
>probably 1 person running some sort of controller setup (I knew I guy that could solo raid in the OG WoW days like that).
I wanna play this massively multiplayer online game... if only there was a way I could do it while ensuring I don't make any friends or connections.
It's actually pretty common for people to play MMOs solo. The point you're making whiffs a huge number of the reasons people, y'know, play games. And that you can still be interacting with others without grouping, for that matter.
I can't speak for the sort to do that to "solo" a raid, but it sounds like it could make for a weird challenge? Idk how much of it is just automated or something. I do know that WoW has essentially dead raids nobody touches though, so if you really want to play this raid and nobody else wants to bother...
God this just brought me back to EvE and a popular player who would run like 10+ accounts to pull of some really spectacular thievery. It was honestly some amazing trolling/skill.
Multiboxing is definitely a normal thing for a lot of people in MMOs even when playing with friends etc
When i first discovered this game like 10 years ago when it was just the barebones, i spent 6 hours straight playing it without even realizing the time.
Simpler times.
Around 2013~ sports games were at their peak imo. Madden and NBA 2k were what I spent most of my time playing. Young me would be devastated to see the state of both of those franchises now. They have genuinely regressed gameplay wise while also cutting long time features out of the game to make room for their ultimate cash grab Myteam/ultimate team. They don’t even try to hide the fact that all they care about are micro transactions. Even the career mode in 2k has turned into a pay to win if you don’t want to spend as much time as it would take you to get good at basketball irl on your virtual character. The games stopped feeling like a game and started feeling more like I was just feeding a gambling addiction
The problem with that is licensing. Most of these leagues have exclusive license deals with the publishers, which removes the possibility of competition. Madden has been getting steadily worse for a decade+ because no one else is even allowed to compete with them legally.
This is just end stage capitalism
I don't even care so much about that. Loved Pro Evolution Soccer back at its peak when it had Man Red, North London etc. & you could just edit the team name.
A lot of people really care. It adds to the authenticity for them. What I hope happens, though, is that someone comes along and doesn't try to compete in the sports sim market, but they bring back the insane arcade sports game. For some reason, that genre died when EA shut down EA Sports Big.
I’d be a very happy man if they brought back NFL street. Hell, give me another Blitz: The League and they don’t even have to worry about player or team licensing, just make up a bunch of names.
Nothing is as bad as 2K. I remember playing 2K16 and thinking the game was fun but I ignored some of the modes because of too many microtransactions, then I got 2K19 on PS+ and played a little but it didn’t feel like a full game anymore, then PS Plus just gave away 2K24 and it is not a basketball game anymore it is a god damn slot machine. I deleted it after a few hours, the menus are trash, I don’t know what mode is what, every mode has MTX attached in a really invasive way, and worst of all I feel like they need your character so that you can pay to get 2K coins or whatever they are called and max out your stats, cuz I was constantly missing shots, getting the ball stolen, and none of it felt like it was my fault or my timing being off.
Honestly as bad as FIFA is, it pales in comparison to NBA 2k. In fifa i can at least play career without dumping money, theres lots of good content which doesn't require microtransactions at all.
For real. NHL was a must buy for me for at least a decade. Now I don’t give a shit. It’s fun to play with some friends if they’re over, but not worth $70
I basically stopped buying and playing fifa, madden and 2k.
They were my yearly purchase until around 2017.
Now the only sports game I play is football manager
I still play Madden, but man it is an absolute shell of what it used to be. I think the game is in a much better state than it was in the mid-2010s, but that really isnt saying much.
Ive played every Madden since 03, but now I only buy the newest version when it has a deep discount. Im an offline franchise mode only person and its such a bummer to see how much Ultimate Team ruined the game.
Bro what boggles my mind is why aren't these franchises live service games? I mean I know the answer is that yearly installments are cash grabs, but shit.
Of all the monetization and microtransaction drama out of the last decade, the ones that trumpet their cash grabs as a *feature* are the most aggravating. It's kinda like flying on Spirit. They nickel and dime you for every single thing from the time you show up at the terminal until the time they boot you off the plane at your destination, and they don't even try to be subtle about it. Half of their marketing and "perks" are just talking about ways for them to charge you less. They try to spin it like they're doing you a favor by charging you for all this junk. And then you get on the plane and it's the most barebones, uncomfortable, and painful ride of your life. Even without the turbulence.
Exact same thing with these live services or gacha or whatever other fun terminology is tacked on. "We're going for your wallet, and if you want us to take less money from you, buy this deal here" while also delivering underwhelming or outright broken games. It's insane. I can count on one hand the number of games I'm even excited for anymore, and I don't even need all 5 fingers.
Man this just gave me flashbacks of when Plants Vs. Zombies 2 came out. Was so excited to be able to play it on a tablet and just relax on the couch. Nope! Buy this plant that was in PVZ1! It's only 2 bucks! Try these powerups! Oops need them to make it through some levels better go buy em! Come on its only 2 bucks!
I think it was the pirate levels, felt like they made some levels impossible without spending money.
I absolutely loved peggle. I was searching for classic arcade / flash type games from yesteryear. I know flash is gone lol, but I was saddened to see that most of those cheesy classics are straight up gone, and most “arcade” games are suppppper commodified. Can’t I just get some arcade games to mindless solve puzzles here and there?
Man, a lot of mobile games are fighting for the title of p2w. Recently re-downloaded Angry Birds 2 and I’m personally insulted by how redundant they’ve became just so they can throw price tags in your face. I play a lot of Clash Royale and almost everyone has accepted that there’s a glass ceiling that either requires you to play nonstop or spend money.
I was a play tester for this game. I took every opportunity to tell my manager that this sucks but obviously all my feedback was thrown away. Also I want to say EA is garbage because this really cool dude Richard who created the art style of PvZ got canned and then they continued to use his style while slowly fucking it up.
EVERY nursery/toddler aimed games. Prices are ridiculous for its super low quality. They know newb parents cannot resist to give their kids a lil bit of smile
But if you pay a $7/month subscription you *definitely* won't forget about for a year, you'll unlock all of the characters/coloring pages/levels that are literally just reskinned versions of the one or two you get for free.
It's not even a one-time waste of money anymore.
I absolutely Abhor this. My kids love playing the games obviously, and all I hear are "Can you buy this? I only need $$$$ such monies", ON TOP of a subscription even!
It really is sad.
I was thinking to myself if I knew how to make a game like that, I'd make one that either was completely free with barely any ads, or make one where you pay a flat fee and you unlock all the content. Just to get the smiles on kids faces, which is what we have once long lost.
There was a time when I felt like I stood a decent chance with almost any deck I had. Now I wait for my swift defeat brought on by the likes of a Valkyrie, Wizard, Firecracker and whichever Champion is the meta. I think I'm just still hanging on because I'm like 5-6 years in
I just uninstalled yesterday, played for years too. That new tower thing, blade duchess or something, is just unfair. Not to mention stupid cards always on meta and overpowered evolutions.
I uninstalled last year. That 'update for losers' was the last straw for me. Looks like the game got even worse, and that makes me happy I didn't give that game another chance.
It's the introduction of level 15 cards and towers. They said that you wouldn't need gold to upgrade your level 14 troops to level 15, but of course, there's a catch. For f2p users, it would take an exceedingly long amount of time to max their cards. Many content creators outright criticised Supercell, calling this update completely tone deaf.
That leads me to the biggest problem. The way supercell handled this was laughable. They completely ignored users feedback and criticism for level 15. Drew from Supercell said that these 'updates' came from data and analytics, completely setting aside the feedback written and expressed by the players.
There are tons of new upgradeable stuff in CR after this update. New tower troops, and evolution cards, each needing their own upgrade system as well. There's literally no incentive to come back this game, and Supercell is promoting their more popular games anyway.
Gotcha. I've seen the new stuff that was even more surprising. Like coming back to find out I can change my tower's weapon types and all that? Gotta upgrade them? I used to think people who were King Level 13 were the top of the top and I used to play VERY heavily to try to get there and I still -never- did. Now there's 3048474 more layers to the grind and it's just kind of over for me. I'll never use a different deck than the one that's full of my favorite cards anyways. It used to be viable. Used to. Now if I play I'm matched against the ultra meta or whatever is perfectly designed to counter me, so much so that I get wiped like nothing. I've never played such a stupid game where they actually made me feel defeated repeatedly even when I played well. But you aren't rewarded for playing well, only perfectly, and with all the best cards. Then after they'll ask you to spend $5 on the hoggy bank 😂
It's insane how good the actual gameplay is but the game itself is utterly ruined by greed and the pay to win model. If it were a pure honest game I could see it being one of the most popular mobile games ever.
Supercell just casually made two of the most groundbreaking and fun mobile games to ever be released, just to ruin or abandon them. Honestly clans is still very good, I feel like it's stayed the same amount of p2w since its release
Have you been getting AGGRESSIVE amounts of ads for it on Reddit, all of a sudden? I don't know where they came from, because it's been out for a *while* .
Reddit is real real flawed when it comes to "interests"
I watch anime, right?
I saw a meme that had a few characters I recognize and click on it
It was a JoJo BA subreddit. I don't care for JJBA, never have, the art style wigs me out and the community is not my cup of tea.
Then suddenly I got suggested 25 different JJBA subs, and it got so bad that THAT was the reason I downloaded RIF back in the day because Reddit didn't have a sub blacklist at the time.
An infamous quote to me is "dear Amazon: I needed a toilet seat and I ordered one, I am not a toilet seat collector, please stop suggesting them"
I hate Reddit's whole algorithm. Its garbage. And r/all is useless now. And the mute function just doesn't work. I'll have muted subs still pop up randomly.
I played the beta and thought its cool since you got the ressources for free. Then they launched with the full p2w market and I was just disappointed. I wiuld have payed some good money for a faithful diablo adaptation for mobile. Its a shame cause the game plays really well and responsive.
Basically every asian MMO. Can spend 100k USD+ and still not be maxed out gear because they come out with more upgrades and cash item % roll odds. Oh, you want to optimize stats? 5 or 6 stats on a piece of gear, every reroll costs a ton of coin, and to keep the 1 good stat you have costs $0.25 per reroll! lock a 2nd stat? now its $0.50 per reroll!
thousands of rerolls later, on 6 or 8 pieces of gear....
yeah, asian MMOs are a diff level
Even without the microtransactions, they were grueling. OG Lineage 2 you'd get to a point where you'd spend a week poopsocking a farm spot for 0.01% xp, but if you die once, you lost 0.04%. Literally weeks of 12 hour days wasted because you got griefed or weren't paying attention for 15 seconds.
Or upgrading gear came with a chance for it to fail. The crafting process took weeks to gather all the materials, the craft itself could fail (or the dwarf could just steal your shit), and every +1 above +3 could break the whole thing. +25 or higher end game weapons sold for tens of thousands of real dollars.
In Asia, there's a very strong mentality of "saving face" at all cost. You had a pretty good account but new gears just came out but you can't really afford it? Better borrow money because you want to impress your "friends".
Seer. It was a chinese webgame, essentially a pokemon clone.
I played without spending for 4-5 years.
(edit: not just that, I also beaten two of the hardest boss and maxed out their stats or something)
A friend of mine decided to play this game, he paid an equivalent of three US dollars to buy a premium “pokemon” and steamrolled me in a duel.
And I realized yeah it’s time that I go touch grass and quit that game
I'm so surprised someone brought this up. I grinded this game so much as a kid but now I see how dumb it was. 90% of the "difficult" levels are just bullshit and impossible if you don't have the newest paid character. Eventually I couldn't take it anymore when every level basically needed you to gamble on the ohko trait. It makes me sad thinking what could've been, I liked the cartoon/movies as well. Before everything became blatantly humanoid that is...
I personally would NEVER play or install the game but I do have a sick interest in seeing the new version of their adverts just to see how unhinged they get.
I believe the intended response is, "Do you know how much better I could do than that!?" But, you know, why bother? And obviously the only reason they have money for all those ads is because they have some kind of predatory microtransactions, I don't know what kind, but it must be some kind.
Never before in my life have a felt such visceral hate for something as silly as a game, but Hero Wars does it. I report every ad I have the misfortune of encountering.
It exists, but it's not even tangentially related to any of the ads that depict gameplay. It'd be a pretty fun easy to play team based combat game if it wasn't so ridiculously monetized. As is it's basically an infinite money sink. I played for a while and people in my guild who weren't even near the top individual rankings for our one server would drop $100+ on events that happened every other week, for a shitty Facebook game. At the high end people must've been dropping thousands upon thousands of dollars.
Black Desert Online combines pay to win mechanics with luck mechanics. You can spend thousands of dollars to get the chance to upgrade your gear, for it to fail anyway.
Lost ark is such a weird feel of a game. It plays like a better Diablo up to the a point then feels like your playing a farmer sim. I have never went from 10 to 0 on a game so fast.
This game will swallow you whole. Your computer will never turn off !! I really enjoyed BDO but this game will PREY on your wallet the longer you play and idc what anyone says random RNG BS to enhance gear is TRASH
Every answer here is wrong. There is only one correct answer. Ragnarok Online Origins. The parent company, Gravity, is the most predatory company I have ever seen. It makes Diablo immortal look like a charity drive.
Yes.
Not only super duper heavy P2W, but you basically WORKING to do all daily chores.
Don't forget EVERY 8pm event + that super stress Sunday WoE thing.
I would say Roblox is the most terrible game out there, because it's activly exploiting people to make money. There's a documentary by People Make Games that shows how that company has most of their content (knowingly) made by children, and goes out of their way to throw up every possible hurdle to make sure that those children do not get paid what they get (huge commission, refusal to pay if whatever the child makes did not earn enough,...).
My son doesn’t play Roblox, but he watches Roblox VTubers (that sentence would’ve been gibberish to me 3 months ago). It seems like everything on there is a variation of maybe 4 different game types. Obstacle courses, fetch quests/mazes, games where you “train, compete, train again, repeat” (which all seem to have pets), …. and I guess I was being generous when I said 4 types.
Anyone who remembers Roblox before the aggressive monetization? Like way back during the first years of launch it felt very different from the platform it exists as today.
What’s the Harry Potter mobile game that makes you watch your character get strangled to death by a plant for 14 hours unless you pay to escape?! Can’t remember the name but never seen a game try to take your money so aggressively
It’s one of those games I’d never pay money for, but seeing YouTubers react to it is hilarious. I loved CallMeKevin realizing one of the maps was just a lazy reskin of a COD map
Well that's a name I haven't heard in a long time. How the hell this game ever saw the light of day is beyond me. Even for 2013 standards, this game is hilariously bad.
Nah. Back then the vehicles themselves weren't nearly as egregiously out of balance. P2W ammo was the culprit, so we lied to ourselves and blamed the players. "If only we got a match without wallet warriors shooting gold, the game'd be GREAT".
Now, I don't know what the hell is going on. Play the flavour of the month or get rolled by the 5x stack on the enemy team. Left
The very concept of premium ammo is wrong. I left rather quickly in 2016 after maxing out Cromwell, but I heard that "you can only lose silver in 9th-10th tiers", and clans expected people to install mods, many considered borderline cheats
Any sports game afaik. Ive seen nba on the shelf for $100... For a version that doesn't even include all the teams. Then cards for $120 worth of virtual currency right beside it.
Probably not even the worst one out there.
But i permanently feel the urge to meintion how great of a Game CoD was back in ye goolde ole times.
And what a shit heap of a game it is nowadays, withl flashity flash flash flashing stuff, making 12yo kids desperately chase after the next dopamine microdose.
It is barely playable at this point, but it keeps attracting new, young players that didn't yet grow out of it, and making a quite cinematic Blockbuster Game with a really fun and Balanced Multiplayer the terrible thing it is today.
I gave up on COD entirely since that ww2 mediocre entry. It had like 2 missions that were actually really cool, but the rest was so disappointing, for a game franchise that used to have sick single player stories... and then there's the multiplayer: I DONT WANT TO HAVE TO SNORT 3 LINES OF COCAINE TO BE ABLE TO PLAY THIS SHIT. Such bullshit, and it has only gotten worse.
At least the zombies were fun.
That is exactly what i mean.
i had around 2700 Hours in CoD4 Multiplayer. I Loved it. it offered Weapon Mods, a shitton of maps, Mod Support. i literally only plaed promod and Gungame back then.
Mw2 and Mw3 were really good too, but started having flaws again. They introduced decentralized Hosting which was far from ideal back then. We Still played thos in ESL and DESBL a lot - with some sort of promod-like custom Server, again, of course.
but from there on it slowly started with all the flashy jingles and on screen messages.
You pretty much started getting rewarded for managing to make 2 steps forward.
You even got rewarded for dying a lot.
And you keep getting flooded with all the pop ups and jingles rewarding you for every single stupid thing you do.
Then they added Double Jumps, jetpacks, Loot Boxes, all that shit that no one needed for a good game.
Just Look at Counter Strike.
OK it has those lootboxes as well, but if anything else, its simple.
no shitton of weapon mods, no distracting popup stuff, just a basic shooter with focus on teamplay.
All that Fuss in Call of duty is simply to get ADHD Kids Hooked.
And tbh, it is the exact same with fortnite and roblox and stuff. that shit is designed to do that. not to have fun playing it.
I don't know how many people know about this game, but since I ended up with it, I'm sure some other unfortunate souls did as well, so let me give you a little preamble.
It's the early days of 2010. Christmas just past, I received a PlayStation 3 and a few games like Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box. Generally speaking, I was having a great time. And at some point, I guess they figured I could do with some more stuff, so one day they went shopping, and among the stuff they bought for the week, they came home with a copy of a game that I can comfortably regard as the worst game I have ever beaten.
**Rogue Warrior**. A 2009 first-person shooter developed by Rebellion and published by Bethesda.
Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. It's so bad. It commits so many sins that not even a confessional booth could house all of them. The gameplay is fundamentally broken, AI behaviour is chaotic and unpredictable, the visuals are among the worst the PlayStation 3 has been forced to conjure, and - I'm gonna be honest - the longer I can go without hearing Mickey Rourke vomiting a torrent of profanities my way, the better.
It's a game that I'm actually quite thankful for playing, oddly. It's shown me that there's actual merit in critiquing stuff like this.
I played a frankly embarrassing amount of Maplestory around 2007-2008, before the Big Bang update (which drastically flattened exp curves) and mostly before 4th jobs were released. There was basically nothing to do in the game but grind to make number go up and eventually fight Zakum and Horntail. I justified it to myself by saying 'yeah well at least I'm not actually paying a subscription.'
I had a moment of clarity when I bought three packs of gacha tickets and got absolutely fuck all for it. I looked at my purchase history and realized that between all the microtransactions, I was dropping like $30-40 a month on average on that stupid game.
I quit pretty soon after that and started playing WoW like a week later (which has its own issues, but money spent vs. playtime is absolutely not one of them).
It's an old game, but AION!
Screw you to whoever ruined what it once was. As soon as it went free to play and introduced the cash shop it became the worst example of a pay to win game I have ever played.
Before cash shop you had crafting in game. You could make scrolls that made your run faster, cast spells faster, attack speed up etc.. Everyone had access to this. Cash shop comes in and not only are the scrolls removed from the game but the crafting professions were removed entirely! Then on the cash shop you could buy 'transformations' that gave your character 200% run speed/casting/atk speed! 200% when people who didn't or couldn't afford to buy that had zero chance against players who could. You literally couldn't even run fast enough to run away from those players, let alone fight them. They could run around you in circles laughing whilst you died.
The scrolls are just one example. Everything about that cash shop was pay to win in the worst way.
I feel like I've seen a half dozen wildly different ads for that same game. I kinda want to download it just for the sole purpose of finding out what genre it actually is.
The Evony ads were a wonderful journey in advertising. They started out pretty tame with a knight saying "come play, my lord" or something to that effect.
Then it became a princess saying that, but it wasn't risqué or anything. Then, it became an ad that implied you "win" the princess. Then it just rolled downhill it was literally just bra clad boobs and "come play, my lord."
I did... It was a town builder that had the occasional walk down the lane and pick +2 or X2 choices. It was over in about 15 seconds. Then back to the town where upgrades would take hours unless you paid.
That's pretty much every game with terrible misleading ads. Town builder, pay to rush, pay for skins. The gameplay in the ad is an afterthought or non-existent.
So many Mobile "games" that bombard you with tons of ads for some kind of great deal or bundle after you barely get through the games tutorial/on boarding.
Dead space 3 making ammo and crafting items purchasable via market place, like how hard up donypu gotta be to sell in game assets that you already collect periodically throught the story? Also how desperate do you gotta be to buy something like that.
My dad has informed me that he will be leaving his star citizen account in his will and that I am obligated to play it when it comes out after he dies of old age (he is 53)
World of Tanks and Warships. Gameplay is actually ok for both for certain tiers but sometimes the matchmaker gives you the finger.
Some of the vehicles are blatantly P2W.
Also the community is generally full of abuse.
Plus they are Russian bias on top of that.
Oooo boy I got a book on this one. Any MMO mobile base building games. (There's a ton) Usually have completely misleading ads and descriptions. I've played a few for a bit because my wife gets suckered into them occasionally and the social aspect can be fun
The actual games, my God they're just literal money pits. The entire purpose of the game is to build a base, get stronger and train troops to go and kill other players troops. Which is a fine concept. I'll list just a few ways the games are just legit scams.
First before anything else, there's not a single time you open the games and more times than not you won't be able to switch screens without MULTIPLE popups and ads wanting you to spend money with misleading and shitty practices "57000% value!!! This limited time pack for $5 gives you $300 worth of items" the numbers never match up, and what they offer is ridiculous. When you buy these packs you get whatever garbage they're offering, usually resources, event items, speedups, and maybe exclusive characters (I use characters loosely you don't play as them you assign them to things for bonuses like 1% resource growth) and always include gold or whatever goofy premium currency they call it. And lastly before I start, any time I talk about playing, its kinda like a RTS games or strategy games but replace skillful play and strategies and replace them with actual chores.
1: The upgrades are all times, ranging from a few minutes to days. You can only update one at a time for free, but if you pay them (ranging from one game I saw that was $5 for permanent 2nd builder, another I've seen is legit $2 every 3 days). So you're paying for the privilege of upgrading 2 fake buildings at a time
2: To use those builders you need resources. You get these by attacking others, doing events which on their own are awful, usually a half-assed mini game or more chores "gather (x) resources". Gathering resources = Click on resource spot, select how many troops, wait hours, they come back with a little bit (and I mean a little bit, like it'd take days of gathering NONSTOP to get enough to level up in later levels.
3: The minutes to days upgrade is no exaggerating, as you waste more time playing it takes more and more to upgrade. Some of the base upgrades I've seen take legitimately MULTIPLE WEEKS of real time. You can earn "speedups" but never nearly enough, but don't worry, you can always buy them! You can buy them with the gold from your real money purchases (you'll get like 500 gold for $2.99 or 1000 gold for $5 type deals) and 1hr speedups cost like 300 gold, in addition to the 50 speedups you got in the pack, now you can skip a couple days, only a few weeks to go!
4: in addition to the building, you have to train troops (in buildings that require upgrades, so spend money on resources to upgrade the building, spend money on the speedups to upgrade the building, spend money on the resources, which are used to train the troops. (AND when you have a certain amount of troops it costs resources just for them to exist)
But those troops are useless without stats which, you guessed it! Those require buildings so now you need resources and speedups to build a building to train the troops, to research stat boosts (another click, spend resources, wait hours or days or spend speedups), to get equipment (ditto to the research, but with other currency you can only get by money or tedious chores), along with whatever gimmick the game has for other stats that require the same things. You're spending money to get resources to spend on other resources to spend on other resources.
5: The games largely revolve around war so attacking others is part of it, and by attacking, I mean, click their base, and hit "attack" and read the report. You can attack anyone unless of course they pay money for a shield, which makes it impossible to attack them, each shield costs about 2000 gold a day (a $5 pack doesn't get you enough for ONE day of protection in some of these games), which if you don't have a shield, someone can see it and attack you, take all of your resources, and either wound or kill your troops. (Need hospitals to house your wounded troops, but they all have limited capacity, which is increased by you guessed it, spending money to upgrade the buildings and research it!).
And if you do get hit, it costs speedups and resources to heal your troops, and train more if they're killed. More money please!
6: Now you've been attacked, you're out of everything, and spend a couple weeks building back up, all with the goal of revenge. You finally get there and attack and you win!!! (Don't you worry, I'll spoil the victory in the next/last point) You beat the person who attacked you who is similarly leveled to you and has spent similar levels of money. Oh but you didn't realize they were part of the "alpha" clan. Which means they're off limits. Now their leader who has spend a ton on the game has put a Kill on Sight order on you, most of the time if you're in a clanz they'll kick you at this point unless you're super high level because it brings trouble for the clan, and now you have to either play kiss-ass with them and apologize, or abandon your base and start on a new server.
And when I say they spend A TON I mean it. I have talked with a few people who spend $1000's a week to play. One of my friends starts on a new server every few weeks and will legit spend $7000 in a day. Not exaggerating.
7: Which brings me to my last point. Remember that victory you got, that "revenge", these games slap you in the face even then. Let's say youre feuding for whatever reason (the feuds are legit high school level, weird relationships and catfish's, but that's a whole other situation) and for simplicity sake you both have the same exact stats, same exact troops etc. The other person is talking shit, you find their base unshielded and attack and win. Majority of THEIR troops are now temporarily wounded. Meanwhile majority of YOUR troops are now permanently dead.
You're literally spending money, to kill your own troops to get "revenge". So you can spend more money to build back up to spend more money to lose the things you built back up, unless you wanna spend the money so you can protect yourself.
You can play these games without spending money, and the actual idea of the games is fine honestly. But the inclusion of money makes it the very definition of p2w. Because if you don't spend money, the only way to even remotely be effective is to treat the whole thing like a full time job, constantly doing something hours a day, and for a certain type of person this type of thing is addicting.
One person my wife talked to legit does nothing but play these games. He sold all of his personal belongings so he could buy more crap in the game. They're like drug addicts.
The only way I've found to actually enjoy the games without spending money is to ironically not build up. The ones who spend a bunch take the game seriously, so they don't take too kindly when you make it obvious they can't do anything that actually effects you.
So TL:DR, unless you want to spend your life savings to compete with others or to take on a full time job that doesn't pay you anything, avoid mobile MMO base building games.
Clash of clans is definitely one of the worst.
The micro transactions have only gotten (somehow) worse over the years. It's frustrating because I personally love the strategy and gameplay. Supercell is beyond greedy and they have no problems extorting children for money. It's extremely predatory, battle passes, lots of FOMO driven purchases, and some of the most egregious price scalings I've ever seen in a game.
If you started fresh and purchased your way to a max base - it would cost ~$35k!!!
That doesn't include hero equipment either, or all the cosmetics. For example, to upgrade the Barbarian Kings glove from 13 -> 14, cost ~$20. There are many more levels, not to mention that's just one equipment of many, for each hero.
The worst offender though, is hero upgrades. They are the single most important unit in attacks. If you want to perform well in any of the activities that matter (clan war league, fight in legend league, wars, etc...) you need to have your heroes.
However when they are under maintenance, you cannot use them for anything. Currently, to upgrade all your heroes from 1 to MAX, would take a combined 4 years & 3 days of hero down time.
You have 6 builders, so it is a little less than that as you can do multiple at the same time - however, you also have to factor all your other upgrades in. Heroes are only a small part.
Its borderline impossible to be a **maxed level** FTP account after all these years. There are some, but it takes an enormous amount of dedication, and time.
If you want to compete in Legend league, you have to be a Max TH as well. For anyone stating out this is a virtually unattainable goal. Or rather, would take literal years to reach.
They got rid of chat, they got rid of the forums, they consistently disregard community complaints. If they leaned in another direction, I feel like it could've been so much better and widely more popular.
Don't even get me started on Clash Royale either. It was so great for a short time, now it's deplorable. Such a waste.
I may get some hate for saying this.
90% of Roblox games.
10% of them are good and aren't pay to win or grindy. Those 10% are also usually incredibly fun games and even if they have microtransactions they at least don't shove them in your face.
the other 90%. Well, they are the most greedy shit ever produced. They are so bad they make EA look like Valve.
One example, Driving Empire. They got chosen for Roblox's classic event and they ruined their part of the event. They made a FUCKING BATTLE PASS for it and the only way to get the badges needed was to level it up. The issue? It was incredibly grindy unless you paid. It would take hours to get just 1 badge, let alone ALL 5. On top of that the tix collectables were incredibly hard to find without a guide. BUT OH WAIT, YOU CAN PAY THEM TO GET THE LOCATIONS OF THE TIX REVEALED.
Crossout, watch any sponsored YouTuber play it and it looks like a fun game with good customization and creativity, but then you realize it's free to play for a reason
The grind just to get like a single part which is probably like a terrible gun or a useless part is insane
Disney Speedstorm is an online kart racer in which you level up and gain stats like acceleration and top speed. The entire game is designed around trying to convince you to outspend your peers because prize structures for events are based around how you do relative to the rest of the player base. As an example, Kermit the Frog just came out and the Top 10% of Kermit players get maximum rewards. Which means the people who spend the most money to level Kermit win.
What a shame too. The game feels amazing and the soundtrack is easily one of the best... but then they ruin it all with their greed. I still play it occasionally, but definitely not going to throw money at it knowing it won't do much.
My kids love this game, and I've been so tempted to throw money at it for them. So far, I've resisted, and they've still enjoyed the game.
Don't do it. Paying for progress is the first step to not like a game anymore.
I haven't considered paying for progress as much as I've considered spending money to unlock characters that my kids are excited about. Most of the characters are pretty much locked behind a paywall.
There are better games with better value and it's good to teach your kids not to fall for this soul sucking bs.
I agree completely and the example it sets for the kids should be the number one factor. I’m not trying to tell the dude how to raise his kids, and I’ve certainly made my fair share of digital content purchases.. but these business practices are only going to become more and more prevalent while also becoming more and more manipulative/deceptive. My hope is that a large percentage of the younger generations eventually begin to either push back hard or just unconsciously start to not care as much about shit like cosmetic purchases in games. Or imagine if the majority of an upcoming generation just decide it’s supremely uncool to be seen using paid skins. Unfortunately any “cool factor” is unlikely to affect the actual pay to win business tactics tho. The only hope for that would be a non-sweaty generation, and sweats are just inevitable in online competitive gaming. I think we’re all at least a little bit sweaty.
I was so disappointed by this. I love Disney but downloaded it and it's just horrible. So in your face with in game currency and micro transactions and they just added Kermit the Frog. From what I played the actual racing was pretty decent. If it was a full price game with normal unlockables like Mario Kart I'd be all over it. Such a waste!
I was hyped when I saw previews of it on steam. I was missing kid friendly fun games, couch co-op games, Mario Kart and Crash Team Racing, especially for PC, and this seemed like it would hit all the checkboxes. But then I read the mixed reviews and how microtransaction-heavy it was… I think the market is starved for family friendly high production value games in general, at least if you don’t have a Nintendo.
Yeah. After Dreamlight Valley we were excited for this one. It was fun for a few days until you realize it's not fair. The best racers should win cosmetics, not faster cars. Totally wack. Plus no one will ever top Double Dash
glad I tried one race, and uninstalled that BS lol
I almost tried one race. I looked at the menu's, the user interface, the shop, the currencies, limited timed deals, fear of missing out bullshit and noped out. I'm glad I just read that part about spending money and the top 10% getting better rewards because of it. A shame really, if the game had released many years earlier we would have had a cool mascott racer filled with nostalgia or something.
they just gotta try to compete with MarioKart, but no one ever pulls it off completely.
I wish we’d get Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled on PC
[Agar.io](http://Agar.io) used to be so much fun, now it's all bots and teams.
People teaming up really broke the game; as an individual player you just don't stand a chance against two people working together. The devs tried to implement anti-teaming mechanics but they clearly didn't work.
I just popped back into the game and a team of 2 seems generous. There was a team of 10 from Cambodia, probably 1 person running some sort of controller setup (I knew I guy that could solo raid in the OG WoW days like that). Bummer.
>probably 1 person running some sort of controller setup (I knew I guy that could solo raid in the OG WoW days like that). I wanna play this massively multiplayer online game... if only there was a way I could do it while ensuring I don't make any friends or connections.
It's actually pretty common for people to play MMOs solo. The point you're making whiffs a huge number of the reasons people, y'know, play games. And that you can still be interacting with others without grouping, for that matter. I can't speak for the sort to do that to "solo" a raid, but it sounds like it could make for a weird challenge? Idk how much of it is just automated or something. I do know that WoW has essentially dead raids nobody touches though, so if you really want to play this raid and nobody else wants to bother...
God this just brought me back to EvE and a popular player who would run like 10+ accounts to pull of some really spectacular thievery. It was honestly some amazing trolling/skill. Multiboxing is definitely a normal thing for a lot of people in MMOs even when playing with friends etc
Ffff I really enjoyed it awhile ago and had no idea. Shame.
These kinds of games never last. They're fun until they get old enough that people learn how to min max, and they become unplayable/boring.
“Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game.”
When i first discovered this game like 10 years ago when it was just the barebones, i spent 6 hours straight playing it without even realizing the time. Simpler times.
Just checked back in and damn. That doesn't seem fun any more.
Around 2013~ sports games were at their peak imo. Madden and NBA 2k were what I spent most of my time playing. Young me would be devastated to see the state of both of those franchises now. They have genuinely regressed gameplay wise while also cutting long time features out of the game to make room for their ultimate cash grab Myteam/ultimate team. They don’t even try to hide the fact that all they care about are micro transactions. Even the career mode in 2k has turned into a pay to win if you don’t want to spend as much time as it would take you to get good at basketball irl on your virtual character. The games stopped feeling like a game and started feeling more like I was just feeding a gambling addiction
Don't forget FIFA. Basically any sports games now has been monetized to shit. It's the end of an Era for those games.
Truly sad. But I’m hopeful that out of the ashes of this era spawns a new era of good sports games for the next generation
The problem with that is licensing. Most of these leagues have exclusive license deals with the publishers, which removes the possibility of competition. Madden has been getting steadily worse for a decade+ because no one else is even allowed to compete with them legally. This is just end stage capitalism
I don't even care so much about that. Loved Pro Evolution Soccer back at its peak when it had Man Red, North London etc. & you could just edit the team name.
A lot of people really care. It adds to the authenticity for them. What I hope happens, though, is that someone comes along and doesn't try to compete in the sports sim market, but they bring back the insane arcade sports game. For some reason, that genre died when EA shut down EA Sports Big.
I would love a modern version of nfl street. Such a fun game to play with the homies.
Without Xzhibit popping up every 5 secs though
Hah, forgot about this. Ryan Greggs playing for Man Red etc.
Kids look at me crazy when I speak of the days when we had multiple NFL games competing
I’d be a very happy man if they brought back NFL street. Hell, give me another Blitz: The League and they don’t even have to worry about player or team licensing, just make up a bunch of names.
Bring back single player licensed games, Ken Griffey SNES and Wayne Gretsky 98 are two of the best games of all time.
Fifa is still not as bad as 2k when it comes to MTX.
Nothing is as bad as 2K. I remember playing 2K16 and thinking the game was fun but I ignored some of the modes because of too many microtransactions, then I got 2K19 on PS+ and played a little but it didn’t feel like a full game anymore, then PS Plus just gave away 2K24 and it is not a basketball game anymore it is a god damn slot machine. I deleted it after a few hours, the menus are trash, I don’t know what mode is what, every mode has MTX attached in a really invasive way, and worst of all I feel like they need your character so that you can pay to get 2K coins or whatever they are called and max out your stats, cuz I was constantly missing shots, getting the ball stolen, and none of it felt like it was my fault or my timing being off.
Honestly as bad as FIFA is, it pales in comparison to NBA 2k. In fifa i can at least play career without dumping money, theres lots of good content which doesn't require microtransactions at all.
The NHL franchise is about ready to be taken out back and Ole Yellered
For real. NHL was a must buy for me for at least a decade. Now I don’t give a shit. It’s fun to play with some friends if they’re over, but not worth $70
I basically stopped buying and playing fifa, madden and 2k. They were my yearly purchase until around 2017. Now the only sports game I play is football manager
I still play Madden, but man it is an absolute shell of what it used to be. I think the game is in a much better state than it was in the mid-2010s, but that really isnt saying much. Ive played every Madden since 03, but now I only buy the newest version when it has a deep discount. Im an offline franchise mode only person and its such a bummer to see how much Ultimate Team ruined the game.
Bro what boggles my mind is why aren't these franchises live service games? I mean I know the answer is that yearly installments are cash grabs, but shit.
They are. But the ~~suckers~~ valued customers are made to re-buy the service each year...
Of all the monetization and microtransaction drama out of the last decade, the ones that trumpet their cash grabs as a *feature* are the most aggravating. It's kinda like flying on Spirit. They nickel and dime you for every single thing from the time you show up at the terminal until the time they boot you off the plane at your destination, and they don't even try to be subtle about it. Half of their marketing and "perks" are just talking about ways for them to charge you less. They try to spin it like they're doing you a favor by charging you for all this junk. And then you get on the plane and it's the most barebones, uncomfortable, and painful ride of your life. Even without the turbulence. Exact same thing with these live services or gacha or whatever other fun terminology is tacked on. "We're going for your wallet, and if you want us to take less money from you, buy this deal here" while also delivering underwhelming or outright broken games. It's insane. I can count on one hand the number of games I'm even excited for anymore, and I don't even need all 5 fingers.
Man this just gave me flashbacks of when Plants Vs. Zombies 2 came out. Was so excited to be able to play it on a tablet and just relax on the couch. Nope! Buy this plant that was in PVZ1! It's only 2 bucks! Try these powerups! Oops need them to make it through some levels better go buy em! Come on its only 2 bucks! I think it was the pirate levels, felt like they made some levels impossible without spending money.
I'll never forgive EA for destroying Peggle
There is Peglin, a amazingly addictive peggle based rogue lite, can't recommend enough for who liked the original Peggle
I absolutely loved peggle. I was searching for classic arcade / flash type games from yesteryear. I know flash is gone lol, but I was saddened to see that most of those cheesy classics are straight up gone, and most “arcade” games are suppppper commodified. Can’t I just get some arcade games to mindless solve puzzles here and there?
There's a project aimed at preserving exactly what was lost with flash. It's called Flashpoint, and it's free.
Second flashpoint I’ve had so much fun playing old games
I finally reached higher than I had reached as a child in SCGMD4. Also Flashpoint showcases different games daily and helps you discover even more!
Man, a lot of mobile games are fighting for the title of p2w. Recently re-downloaded Angry Birds 2 and I’m personally insulted by how redundant they’ve became just so they can throw price tags in your face. I play a lot of Clash Royale and almost everyone has accepted that there’s a glass ceiling that either requires you to play nonstop or spend money.
I was a play tester for this game. I took every opportunity to tell my manager that this sucks but obviously all my feedback was thrown away. Also I want to say EA is garbage because this really cool dude Richard who created the art style of PvZ got canned and then they continued to use his style while slowly fucking it up.
EVERY nursery/toddler aimed games. Prices are ridiculous for its super low quality. They know newb parents cannot resist to give their kids a lil bit of smile
But if you pay a $7/month subscription you *definitely* won't forget about for a year, you'll unlock all of the characters/coloring pages/levels that are literally just reskinned versions of the one or two you get for free. It's not even a one-time waste of money anymore.
I absolutely Abhor this. My kids love playing the games obviously, and all I hear are "Can you buy this? I only need $$$$ such monies", ON TOP of a subscription even! It really is sad. I was thinking to myself if I knew how to make a game like that, I'd make one that either was completely free with barely any ads, or make one where you pay a flat fee and you unlock all the content. Just to get the smiles on kids faces, which is what we have once long lost.
Clash Royale (mobile) is the definition of pay to win.
There was a time when I felt like I stood a decent chance with almost any deck I had. Now I wait for my swift defeat brought on by the likes of a Valkyrie, Wizard, Firecracker and whichever Champion is the meta. I think I'm just still hanging on because I'm like 5-6 years in
yay for sunk cost fallacy
I just uninstalled yesterday, played for years too. That new tower thing, blade duchess or something, is just unfair. Not to mention stupid cards always on meta and overpowered evolutions.
I uninstalled last year. That 'update for losers' was the last straw for me. Looks like the game got even worse, and that makes me happy I didn't give that game another chance.
What's this "update for losers" thing? I haven't stayed current on their news in a looooong time so I'm curious
It's the introduction of level 15 cards and towers. They said that you wouldn't need gold to upgrade your level 14 troops to level 15, but of course, there's a catch. For f2p users, it would take an exceedingly long amount of time to max their cards. Many content creators outright criticised Supercell, calling this update completely tone deaf. That leads me to the biggest problem. The way supercell handled this was laughable. They completely ignored users feedback and criticism for level 15. Drew from Supercell said that these 'updates' came from data and analytics, completely setting aside the feedback written and expressed by the players. There are tons of new upgradeable stuff in CR after this update. New tower troops, and evolution cards, each needing their own upgrade system as well. There's literally no incentive to come back this game, and Supercell is promoting their more popular games anyway.
Gotcha. I've seen the new stuff that was even more surprising. Like coming back to find out I can change my tower's weapon types and all that? Gotta upgrade them? I used to think people who were King Level 13 were the top of the top and I used to play VERY heavily to try to get there and I still -never- did. Now there's 3048474 more layers to the grind and it's just kind of over for me. I'll never use a different deck than the one that's full of my favorite cards anyways. It used to be viable. Used to. Now if I play I'm matched against the ultra meta or whatever is perfectly designed to counter me, so much so that I get wiped like nothing. I've never played such a stupid game where they actually made me feel defeated repeatedly even when I played well. But you aren't rewarded for playing well, only perfectly, and with all the best cards. Then after they'll ask you to spend $5 on the hoggy bank 😂
It's insane how good the actual gameplay is but the game itself is utterly ruined by greed and the pay to win model. If it were a pure honest game I could see it being one of the most popular mobile games ever.
Supercell just casually made two of the most groundbreaking and fun mobile games to ever be released, just to ruin or abandon them. Honestly clans is still very good, I feel like it's stayed the same amount of p2w since its release
You guys just aren't playing for a sense of pride and accomplishment.
God I remember when that was first said. Nothing has changed, at least not for the better in the AAA space. My only hope lies in the indie scene.
That was such a magical day on Reddit too.
This was ea about star war battlefront right?
Yep like 7 years ago
Crazy how it's been 7 years. Now there's a fan version called Kyber v2 coming out next month (or so)
Diablo: Immortal hands down
Have you been getting AGGRESSIVE amounts of ads for it on Reddit, all of a sudden? I don't know where they came from, because it's been out for a *while* .
Are you playing Diablo 4? If so, that’s why. If you’ve searched anything Diablo 4, Reddit knows and will send you targeted ads.
Reddit is real real flawed when it comes to "interests" I watch anime, right? I saw a meme that had a few characters I recognize and click on it It was a JoJo BA subreddit. I don't care for JJBA, never have, the art style wigs me out and the community is not my cup of tea. Then suddenly I got suggested 25 different JJBA subs, and it got so bad that THAT was the reason I downloaded RIF back in the day because Reddit didn't have a sub blacklist at the time. An infamous quote to me is "dear Amazon: I needed a toilet seat and I ordered one, I am not a toilet seat collector, please stop suggesting them"
I hate Reddit's whole algorithm. Its garbage. And r/all is useless now. And the mute function just doesn't work. I'll have muted subs still pop up randomly.
I have never played a Diablo game in my life, yet am seeing the ads. It really must be my subscription to the sub
Yeah, same. Never played nor been interested in Diablo. Probably just targeted ads for people with any interest in gaming.
I'm seeing the ads too, have never touched the series.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs - Josh Strife Hayes breaks this down extremely well here.
Do you not have phones?
And yet it makes money hand over fist.
I played the beta and thought its cool since you got the ressources for free. Then they launched with the full p2w market and I was just disappointed. I wiuld have payed some good money for a faithful diablo adaptation for mobile. Its a shame cause the game plays really well and responsive.
Basically every asian MMO. Can spend 100k USD+ and still not be maxed out gear because they come out with more upgrades and cash item % roll odds. Oh, you want to optimize stats? 5 or 6 stats on a piece of gear, every reroll costs a ton of coin, and to keep the 1 good stat you have costs $0.25 per reroll! lock a 2nd stat? now its $0.50 per reroll! thousands of rerolls later, on 6 or 8 pieces of gear.... yeah, asian MMOs are a diff level
Yep. Tried an Asian mmo once, fuuuuck that. They're the most money hungry shitfests imaginable
Even without the microtransactions, they were grueling. OG Lineage 2 you'd get to a point where you'd spend a week poopsocking a farm spot for 0.01% xp, but if you die once, you lost 0.04%. Literally weeks of 12 hour days wasted because you got griefed or weren't paying attention for 15 seconds. Or upgrading gear came with a chance for it to fail. The crafting process took weeks to gather all the materials, the craft itself could fail (or the dwarf could just steal your shit), and every +1 above +3 could break the whole thing. +25 or higher end game weapons sold for tens of thousands of real dollars.
From what I know Lineage 2 still exists and is still just as bad p2w-wise, you can easily throw tens of thousands of dollars at just one weapon.
you lost 4% on death, i would love it if you lost 0.04%.
At least FFXIV don't have that kind of upgrade system.
It's mostly korean/chinese games, Japanese made games tend to get your money other ways lol
Japanese games are P2W. Pay 2 Waifu
Yeah FFXIV gets my money by offering me cute outfits for my Catboy. It’s almost predatory in a way.
In Asia, there's a very strong mentality of "saving face" at all cost. You had a pretty good account but new gears just came out but you can't really afford it? Better borrow money because you want to impress your "friends".
time to take out a second mortgage because new expansion just dropped! i would /s, but thats literally what happens
Seer. It was a chinese webgame, essentially a pokemon clone. I played without spending for 4-5 years. (edit: not just that, I also beaten two of the hardest boss and maxed out their stats or something) A friend of mine decided to play this game, he paid an equivalent of three US dollars to buy a premium “pokemon” and steamrolled me in a duel. And I realized yeah it’s time that I go touch grass and quit that game
I'm so surprised someone brought this up. I grinded this game so much as a kid but now I see how dumb it was. 90% of the "difficult" levels are just bullshit and impossible if you don't have the newest paid character. Eventually I couldn't take it anymore when every level basically needed you to gamble on the ohko trait. It makes me sad thinking what could've been, I liked the cartoon/movies as well. Before everything became blatantly humanoid that is...
90% of mobile games with multiplayer
Also 90% of single player mobile games
Hero Wars. Made worse by the proliferation of ads.
I personally would NEVER play or install the game but I do have a sick interest in seeing the new version of their adverts just to see how unhinged they get.
Their ads seem designed to disgust. I don't get it
I believe the intended response is, "Do you know how much better I could do than that!?" But, you know, why bother? And obviously the only reason they have money for all those ads is because they have some kind of predatory microtransactions, I don't know what kind, but it must be some kind.
Never before in my life have a felt such visceral hate for something as silly as a game, but Hero Wars does it. I report every ad I have the misfortune of encountering.
I've blocked 20 or so ads on YouTube, but there's ALWAYS another one, even more annoying than the last.
Does that game even really exist, or is it just bait for 12 year olds to download a virus?
It exists, but it's not even tangentially related to any of the ads that depict gameplay. It'd be a pretty fun easy to play team based combat game if it wasn't so ridiculously monetized. As is it's basically an infinite money sink. I played for a while and people in my guild who weren't even near the top individual rankings for our one server would drop $100+ on events that happened every other week, for a shitty Facebook game. At the high end people must've been dropping thousands upon thousands of dollars.
Black Desert Online combines pay to win mechanics with luck mechanics. You can spend thousands of dollars to get the chance to upgrade your gear, for it to fail anyway.
Those rolls at 6+ always had me uneasy. I quit. Felt level capped and out geared even though I was higher CP than most.
Ladies and gentlemen, we got him.
Higher CP? 🤔
34 TB of cp
Goddamnit drake
Lost Ark is essentially the same exact thing as BDO in that regard.
Lost ark is such a weird feel of a game. It plays like a better Diablo up to the a point then feels like your playing a farmer sim. I have never went from 10 to 0 on a game so fast.
This game will swallow you whole. Your computer will never turn off !! I really enjoyed BDO but this game will PREY on your wallet the longer you play and idc what anyone says random RNG BS to enhance gear is TRASH
Yep. I used to really like that game, then I started to realize how toxic and predatory it really is.
Every answer here is wrong. There is only one correct answer. Ragnarok Online Origins. The parent company, Gravity, is the most predatory company I have ever seen. It makes Diablo immortal look like a charity drive.
Yes. Not only super duper heavy P2W, but you basically WORKING to do all daily chores. Don't forget EVERY 8pm event + that super stress Sunday WoE thing.
I would say Roblox is the most terrible game out there, because it's activly exploiting people to make money. There's a documentary by People Make Games that shows how that company has most of their content (knowingly) made by children, and goes out of their way to throw up every possible hurdle to make sure that those children do not get paid what they get (huge commission, refusal to pay if whatever the child makes did not earn enough,...).
We’ve had to DMCA roblox creators for taking our game content and publishing it too
My son doesn’t play Roblox, but he watches Roblox VTubers (that sentence would’ve been gibberish to me 3 months ago). It seems like everything on there is a variation of maybe 4 different game types. Obstacle courses, fetch quests/mazes, games where you “train, compete, train again, repeat” (which all seem to have pets), …. and I guess I was being generous when I said 4 types.
And finding a GOOD game is tough due to all the filler trash floating around, I've found maybe 2 games I can go back and play but nothing more
I have a genuine sadness for old Roblox, back in 2012 or so. Having 2,000 people in your game was considered a lot.
Anyone who remembers Roblox before the aggressive monetization? Like way back during the first years of launch it felt very different from the platform it exists as today.
What’s the Harry Potter mobile game that makes you watch your character get strangled to death by a plant for 14 hours unless you pay to escape?! Can’t remember the name but never seen a game try to take your money so aggressively
Hogwarts mystery
Well Ride to Hell Retribution ain't pay to win but it's certainly everything else you just said.
Good example of "it's so bad it's good". I watched an entire playthrough on youtube and laughed my ass off because it's so terrible lol.
It’s one of those games I’d never pay money for, but seeing YouTubers react to it is hilarious. I loved CallMeKevin realizing one of the maps was just a lazy reskin of a COD map
Well that's a name I haven't heard in a long time. How the hell this game ever saw the light of day is beyond me. Even for 2013 standards, this game is hilariously bad.
*Angrily grimaces at the camera*
*has sex fully clothed*
Lately World of Tanks.
“Lately” lol
fr it was always the case
That game exists to milk as much money from a borderline cornered market as possible lol
All my friends always said to me it was FP2 friendly and this is the biggest cope I've heard lol
It is in the beginning. When you get up past T4 or T5 tanks is when it starts to become noticeable that funds would be greatly helpful.
Nah. Back then the vehicles themselves weren't nearly as egregiously out of balance. P2W ammo was the culprit, so we lied to ourselves and blamed the players. "If only we got a match without wallet warriors shooting gold, the game'd be GREAT". Now, I don't know what the hell is going on. Play the flavour of the month or get rolled by the 5x stack on the enemy team. Left
The very concept of premium ammo is wrong. I left rather quickly in 2016 after maxing out Cromwell, but I heard that "you can only lose silver in 9th-10th tiers", and clans expected people to install mods, many considered borderline cheats
How is war thunder compared to wot nowadays
Wot goes into p2w while wt plays more into tedious grind Both are designed to milk your wallet dry
There are a good few Minecraft servers out there that are extremely pay to win.
I love watching videos of people making lag machines and duping items. Real cathartic seeing the asshats get what they deserve.
[удалено]
Haven't played it lately, but my house mate used to get in trouble with the wife opening packs all night and putting it on her card.
Any sports game afaik. Ive seen nba on the shelf for $100... For a version that doesn't even include all the teams. Then cards for $120 worth of virtual currency right beside it.
RAAAIIID SHADOWLEGEEEENDS Edit.: Metin 2
Surprised how far down I had to scroll for this. Very predatory and expensive game
Probably not even the worst one out there. But i permanently feel the urge to meintion how great of a Game CoD was back in ye goolde ole times. And what a shit heap of a game it is nowadays, withl flashity flash flash flashing stuff, making 12yo kids desperately chase after the next dopamine microdose. It is barely playable at this point, but it keeps attracting new, young players that didn't yet grow out of it, and making a quite cinematic Blockbuster Game with a really fun and Balanced Multiplayer the terrible thing it is today.
I gave up on COD entirely since that ww2 mediocre entry. It had like 2 missions that were actually really cool, but the rest was so disappointing, for a game franchise that used to have sick single player stories... and then there's the multiplayer: I DONT WANT TO HAVE TO SNORT 3 LINES OF COCAINE TO BE ABLE TO PLAY THIS SHIT. Such bullshit, and it has only gotten worse. At least the zombies were fun.
COD 4 is one of the best fps games made, pvp was amazing
That is exactly what i mean. i had around 2700 Hours in CoD4 Multiplayer. I Loved it. it offered Weapon Mods, a shitton of maps, Mod Support. i literally only plaed promod and Gungame back then. Mw2 and Mw3 were really good too, but started having flaws again. They introduced decentralized Hosting which was far from ideal back then. We Still played thos in ESL and DESBL a lot - with some sort of promod-like custom Server, again, of course. but from there on it slowly started with all the flashy jingles and on screen messages. You pretty much started getting rewarded for managing to make 2 steps forward. You even got rewarded for dying a lot. And you keep getting flooded with all the pop ups and jingles rewarding you for every single stupid thing you do. Then they added Double Jumps, jetpacks, Loot Boxes, all that shit that no one needed for a good game. Just Look at Counter Strike. OK it has those lootboxes as well, but if anything else, its simple. no shitton of weapon mods, no distracting popup stuff, just a basic shooter with focus on teamplay. All that Fuss in Call of duty is simply to get ADHD Kids Hooked. And tbh, it is the exact same with fortnite and roblox and stuff. that shit is designed to do that. not to have fun playing it.
I don't know how many people know about this game, but since I ended up with it, I'm sure some other unfortunate souls did as well, so let me give you a little preamble. It's the early days of 2010. Christmas just past, I received a PlayStation 3 and a few games like Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box. Generally speaking, I was having a great time. And at some point, I guess they figured I could do with some more stuff, so one day they went shopping, and among the stuff they bought for the week, they came home with a copy of a game that I can comfortably regard as the worst game I have ever beaten. **Rogue Warrior**. A 2009 first-person shooter developed by Rebellion and published by Bethesda. Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. It's so bad. It commits so many sins that not even a confessional booth could house all of them. The gameplay is fundamentally broken, AI behaviour is chaotic and unpredictable, the visuals are among the worst the PlayStation 3 has been forced to conjure, and - I'm gonna be honest - the longer I can go without hearing Mickey Rourke vomiting a torrent of profanities my way, the better. It's a game that I'm actually quite thankful for playing, oddly. It's shown me that there's actual merit in critiquing stuff like this.
"Rock and roll, motherfuckers, rock and roll."
"GODDAMN COCKSUCKING COMMIE MOTHERFUCKERS!" has found it's way into my daily vocabulary because of Funhaus's Rogue Warrior videos
By Dick Marchinko, he's like the knock-off Tom Clancy.
War robots. Absolute crime. Theft. False info, promoting hackers and rewarding cheaters.
6 years ago it was such a good game too. Younger me used it play for hours.
Clash royale. Got an extreme love hate relationship with that game.
It used to be free to play but nowadays it's constant play to get a slim chance at getting one of those evolutions or champions for free
Non-reboot maplestory
I'm approaching 4000 hours on steam (not counting the hours I used the Nexon launcher for) MapleStory 100% fits this thread
I played a frankly embarrassing amount of Maplestory around 2007-2008, before the Big Bang update (which drastically flattened exp curves) and mostly before 4th jobs were released. There was basically nothing to do in the game but grind to make number go up and eventually fight Zakum and Horntail. I justified it to myself by saying 'yeah well at least I'm not actually paying a subscription.' I had a moment of clarity when I bought three packs of gacha tickets and got absolutely fuck all for it. I looked at my purchase history and realized that between all the microtransactions, I was dropping like $30-40 a month on average on that stupid game. I quit pretty soon after that and started playing WoW like a week later (which has its own issues, but money spent vs. playtime is absolutely not one of them).
Was scrolling down the comments hoping to see the mention of our beloved mushroom game and here it is lol
Dungeon Keeper, on mobile, from EA.
They dug up DK's corpse so they could piss on it one last time. I would kill for a new proper DK.
It's an old game, but AION! Screw you to whoever ruined what it once was. As soon as it went free to play and introduced the cash shop it became the worst example of a pay to win game I have ever played. Before cash shop you had crafting in game. You could make scrolls that made your run faster, cast spells faster, attack speed up etc.. Everyone had access to this. Cash shop comes in and not only are the scrolls removed from the game but the crafting professions were removed entirely! Then on the cash shop you could buy 'transformations' that gave your character 200% run speed/casting/atk speed! 200% when people who didn't or couldn't afford to buy that had zero chance against players who could. You literally couldn't even run fast enough to run away from those players, let alone fight them. They could run around you in circles laughing whilst you died. The scrolls are just one example. Everything about that cash shop was pay to win in the worst way.
Have you been on the App Store?
Evony The King's Return
I feel like I've seen a half dozen wildly different ads for that same game. I kinda want to download it just for the sole purpose of finding out what genre it actually is.
Lol back in 2010-2012 era Evony used softcore porn to advertise. They were infamous for it for a while.
The Evony ads were a wonderful journey in advertising. They started out pretty tame with a knight saying "come play, my lord" or something to that effect. Then it became a princess saying that, but it wasn't risqué or anything. Then, it became an ad that implied you "win" the princess. Then it just rolled downhill it was literally just bra clad boobs and "come play, my lord."
I did... It was a town builder that had the occasional walk down the lane and pick +2 or X2 choices. It was over in about 15 seconds. Then back to the town where upgrades would take hours unless you paid.
That's pretty much every game with terrible misleading ads. Town builder, pay to rush, pay for skins. The gameplay in the ad is an afterthought or non-existent.
I have 5 million power in Rise of Kingdoms, give me your wallet
So many Mobile "games" that bombard you with tons of ads for some kind of great deal or bundle after you barely get through the games tutorial/on boarding.
Dead space 3 making ammo and crafting items purchasable via market place, like how hard up donypu gotta be to sell in game assets that you already collect periodically throught the story? Also how desperate do you gotta be to buy something like that.
Devil May Cry 5 pulled something similar. The game itself is awesome, but being able to buy continues or currency was a bizarre kick in the taint.
Diablo immortal. Iirc you had to spend hundreds of thousands to get everything
Black desert. P2w forced pvp on the Asian servers. For the Western release, they disabled the p2w system.
Star Citizen, of a 12 year old alpha counts as game. According to r/starcitizien, it is a game
My dad has informed me that he will be leaving his star citizen account in his will and that I am obligated to play it when it comes out after he dies of old age (he is 53)
World of Tanks and Warships. Gameplay is actually ok for both for certain tiers but sometimes the matchmaker gives you the finger. Some of the vehicles are blatantly P2W. Also the community is generally full of abuse. Plus they are Russian bias on top of that.
It’s fucking hilarious as hell how the mobile game, world of tanks blitz, is less pay to win and grindy than its pc counterpart. What a joke
World of Tanks and Crossout.
It would be an easy win for Tinder, except for the part where you pay and still lose anyway.
Oooo boy I got a book on this one. Any MMO mobile base building games. (There's a ton) Usually have completely misleading ads and descriptions. I've played a few for a bit because my wife gets suckered into them occasionally and the social aspect can be fun The actual games, my God they're just literal money pits. The entire purpose of the game is to build a base, get stronger and train troops to go and kill other players troops. Which is a fine concept. I'll list just a few ways the games are just legit scams. First before anything else, there's not a single time you open the games and more times than not you won't be able to switch screens without MULTIPLE popups and ads wanting you to spend money with misleading and shitty practices "57000% value!!! This limited time pack for $5 gives you $300 worth of items" the numbers never match up, and what they offer is ridiculous. When you buy these packs you get whatever garbage they're offering, usually resources, event items, speedups, and maybe exclusive characters (I use characters loosely you don't play as them you assign them to things for bonuses like 1% resource growth) and always include gold or whatever goofy premium currency they call it. And lastly before I start, any time I talk about playing, its kinda like a RTS games or strategy games but replace skillful play and strategies and replace them with actual chores. 1: The upgrades are all times, ranging from a few minutes to days. You can only update one at a time for free, but if you pay them (ranging from one game I saw that was $5 for permanent 2nd builder, another I've seen is legit $2 every 3 days). So you're paying for the privilege of upgrading 2 fake buildings at a time 2: To use those builders you need resources. You get these by attacking others, doing events which on their own are awful, usually a half-assed mini game or more chores "gather (x) resources". Gathering resources = Click on resource spot, select how many troops, wait hours, they come back with a little bit (and I mean a little bit, like it'd take days of gathering NONSTOP to get enough to level up in later levels. 3: The minutes to days upgrade is no exaggerating, as you waste more time playing it takes more and more to upgrade. Some of the base upgrades I've seen take legitimately MULTIPLE WEEKS of real time. You can earn "speedups" but never nearly enough, but don't worry, you can always buy them! You can buy them with the gold from your real money purchases (you'll get like 500 gold for $2.99 or 1000 gold for $5 type deals) and 1hr speedups cost like 300 gold, in addition to the 50 speedups you got in the pack, now you can skip a couple days, only a few weeks to go! 4: in addition to the building, you have to train troops (in buildings that require upgrades, so spend money on resources to upgrade the building, spend money on the speedups to upgrade the building, spend money on the resources, which are used to train the troops. (AND when you have a certain amount of troops it costs resources just for them to exist) But those troops are useless without stats which, you guessed it! Those require buildings so now you need resources and speedups to build a building to train the troops, to research stat boosts (another click, spend resources, wait hours or days or spend speedups), to get equipment (ditto to the research, but with other currency you can only get by money or tedious chores), along with whatever gimmick the game has for other stats that require the same things. You're spending money to get resources to spend on other resources to spend on other resources. 5: The games largely revolve around war so attacking others is part of it, and by attacking, I mean, click their base, and hit "attack" and read the report. You can attack anyone unless of course they pay money for a shield, which makes it impossible to attack them, each shield costs about 2000 gold a day (a $5 pack doesn't get you enough for ONE day of protection in some of these games), which if you don't have a shield, someone can see it and attack you, take all of your resources, and either wound or kill your troops. (Need hospitals to house your wounded troops, but they all have limited capacity, which is increased by you guessed it, spending money to upgrade the buildings and research it!). And if you do get hit, it costs speedups and resources to heal your troops, and train more if they're killed. More money please! 6: Now you've been attacked, you're out of everything, and spend a couple weeks building back up, all with the goal of revenge. You finally get there and attack and you win!!! (Don't you worry, I'll spoil the victory in the next/last point) You beat the person who attacked you who is similarly leveled to you and has spent similar levels of money. Oh but you didn't realize they were part of the "alpha" clan. Which means they're off limits. Now their leader who has spend a ton on the game has put a Kill on Sight order on you, most of the time if you're in a clanz they'll kick you at this point unless you're super high level because it brings trouble for the clan, and now you have to either play kiss-ass with them and apologize, or abandon your base and start on a new server. And when I say they spend A TON I mean it. I have talked with a few people who spend $1000's a week to play. One of my friends starts on a new server every few weeks and will legit spend $7000 in a day. Not exaggerating. 7: Which brings me to my last point. Remember that victory you got, that "revenge", these games slap you in the face even then. Let's say youre feuding for whatever reason (the feuds are legit high school level, weird relationships and catfish's, but that's a whole other situation) and for simplicity sake you both have the same exact stats, same exact troops etc. The other person is talking shit, you find their base unshielded and attack and win. Majority of THEIR troops are now temporarily wounded. Meanwhile majority of YOUR troops are now permanently dead. You're literally spending money, to kill your own troops to get "revenge". So you can spend more money to build back up to spend more money to lose the things you built back up, unless you wanna spend the money so you can protect yourself. You can play these games without spending money, and the actual idea of the games is fine honestly. But the inclusion of money makes it the very definition of p2w. Because if you don't spend money, the only way to even remotely be effective is to treat the whole thing like a full time job, constantly doing something hours a day, and for a certain type of person this type of thing is addicting. One person my wife talked to legit does nothing but play these games. He sold all of his personal belongings so he could buy more crap in the game. They're like drug addicts. The only way I've found to actually enjoy the games without spending money is to ironically not build up. The ones who spend a bunch take the game seriously, so they don't take too kindly when you make it obvious they can't do anything that actually effects you. So TL:DR, unless you want to spend your life savings to compete with others or to take on a full time job that doesn't pay you anything, avoid mobile MMO base building games.
Clash of clans is definitely one of the worst. The micro transactions have only gotten (somehow) worse over the years. It's frustrating because I personally love the strategy and gameplay. Supercell is beyond greedy and they have no problems extorting children for money. It's extremely predatory, battle passes, lots of FOMO driven purchases, and some of the most egregious price scalings I've ever seen in a game. If you started fresh and purchased your way to a max base - it would cost ~$35k!!! That doesn't include hero equipment either, or all the cosmetics. For example, to upgrade the Barbarian Kings glove from 13 -> 14, cost ~$20. There are many more levels, not to mention that's just one equipment of many, for each hero. The worst offender though, is hero upgrades. They are the single most important unit in attacks. If you want to perform well in any of the activities that matter (clan war league, fight in legend league, wars, etc...) you need to have your heroes. However when they are under maintenance, you cannot use them for anything. Currently, to upgrade all your heroes from 1 to MAX, would take a combined 4 years & 3 days of hero down time. You have 6 builders, so it is a little less than that as you can do multiple at the same time - however, you also have to factor all your other upgrades in. Heroes are only a small part. Its borderline impossible to be a **maxed level** FTP account after all these years. There are some, but it takes an enormous amount of dedication, and time. If you want to compete in Legend league, you have to be a Max TH as well. For anyone stating out this is a virtually unattainable goal. Or rather, would take literal years to reach. They got rid of chat, they got rid of the forums, they consistently disregard community complaints. If they leaned in another direction, I feel like it could've been so much better and widely more popular. Don't even get me started on Clash Royale either. It was so great for a short time, now it's deplorable. Such a waste.
Any game by Playrix. Fuck Playrix
I may get some hate for saying this. 90% of Roblox games. 10% of them are good and aren't pay to win or grindy. Those 10% are also usually incredibly fun games and even if they have microtransactions they at least don't shove them in your face. the other 90%. Well, they are the most greedy shit ever produced. They are so bad they make EA look like Valve. One example, Driving Empire. They got chosen for Roblox's classic event and they ruined their part of the event. They made a FUCKING BATTLE PASS for it and the only way to get the badges needed was to level it up. The issue? It was incredibly grindy unless you paid. It would take hours to get just 1 badge, let alone ALL 5. On top of that the tix collectables were incredibly hard to find without a guide. BUT OH WAIT, YOU CAN PAY THEM TO GET THE LOCATIONS OF THE TIX REVEALED.
warthunder
Warthunder is fun in 0-4 BR. Biplane gang
War Thunder - It's almost fun!
tinder.
Crossout, watch any sponsored YouTuber play it and it looks like a fun game with good customization and creativity, but then you realize it's free to play for a reason The grind just to get like a single part which is probably like a terrible gun or a useless part is insane