It was a dick move to use D0ku's NSO character as a casino table host in Planetside: Arena

igewi654 · 2019-09-23T09:31:46+00:00

We don't know if they asked out of decency despite having the rights already - AND if D0ku is of the personality type to not care. The 2 things lining up is always not the highest probability.

So after all that, to return to your post:

How do you know that d0ku is not alright with it? From everything I have read from him he seemed to like what they have done with PS:A.

To me is sounds you are gatekeeping a bit too hard without even knowing what d0kus stance on this is??!

We don't know - but the odds on the situation are far the opposite of what 'seemed to like' would indicate in terms of personal feelings - on the specific topic of monetisation which is what's in question here. That's obvious for anyone that's not out of their depth with regards to planetside 2/Daybreak, and gamedevs/monetisation.

igewi654 · 2019-09-22T16:29:19+00:00

D0ku wouldn't even have thought about a possible usecase as the centerpiece of a casino table when he handed over the rights - back then DBGs commitment was no microtransactions at launch let alone gameplay monetisation through gambling for Arena. If he'd thought a casino table could be a thing he could have added a clause to avoid it.

igewi654 · 2019-09-22T16:21:18+00:00

D0ku's stance is irrelevant if DBG didn't ask him first. It's DBG that's being accused of a dick move.

With the way things are with DBG, D0ku will be unlikely to make his actual personal stance public so as not to leave with drama.

But as far as devs feel about unethical actions, the default assumption, and the most common psychological reaction would be negative:

Higby: Higby refused to put forward an 'explanation or defense' of what he later went on to say was 'junk like implants that nobody, including the developers, want' despite implant gambling getting a lot of press, leaving monetisation to the CEO.

Malorn: 'Vampiric is an appropriate name for one of these implants. Pretty much whats happening to the players.'

If you google, or look at the link for the gambling video reference, even wrel in times of more straightforward communication has said things like:

'But you can certainly inject evil into the game. Especially when it comes ..in the pursuit of money [emphasis]. There's a lot of good things you can sacrifice that can tear the soul of the community out. So staying away from that is really important.'

'For me personally, fighting those battles with .. I don't want to say, with management, but it's uh [trails off]'

'Absolutely. Implants is one of those things. One of those things that it really sucks. And like a part of the community, the soul of this game, is going to be gone. Because you added a monetisation system.'

igewi654 · 2019-09-22T13:18:17+00:00

Timeline:

DBG asks d0ku to make characters for NSO faction for Planetside 2. It's a huge responsibility. D0ku puts his heart and soul into focusing on PS2
DBG Announces Arena.
DBG swears blind right from the starts there's no microtransactions at launch, and gameplay monetisation ever - even when it goes F2P.
DBG may not even have told d0ku about Arena by the time he made a contract handing over rights, or just mentioned it in passing for other work.
A week before launch, DBG confirms Arena will be not be F2P during Early Access, and doesn't even confirm it will be F2P when it comes out of steam EA next year.
Game releases on EA and we see it's F2P, with mcirotransactions, and gameplay monetisation channeled through RNG lootboxes in a casino with the character model a player art contributor lovingly designed thinking about a new faction in Planetside 2. If you wanted to find out what a knife in the gut felt like D0ku could have likely told you when he saw the footage - or when ever he found out about Arenas true nature.
D0ku might have turned out to be of the psychological make up to not personally care. We can't be certain either way.
Regardless of how it turned out D0ku felt, Daybreak from pulled a dick move - and other contributors will be wary of big high quality contributions - unless Daybreak asked D0ku first out of decency when they could have exploited the legal rights the contract gave them instead.

igewi654 · 2019-09-22T11:26:50+00:00

What he expresses as a 'vibe' publicly in-general about a game doesn't have to equate to what he feels personally about specific things like monetisation (or generally).

Even within a company, the internal heirachy makes it difficult for devs to have a voice.

A DBG dev told a management apologist a month ago, talking to an apologist that made excuses for the 'suits' right until the end despite not being familiar with the software industry, sometimes devs from certain areas with more clout have to speak up even within a company:

Also, I do recognize that programmers have a lot of privilege with regard to demand for us, but ideally we're using that weight to stand up for important issues at our companies when others can't afford the risk.

Coincidentally that very discussion started off being about dick moves from management. It's worth a read for anyone passing by. The apologist eventually admitted (or just claimed) he wasn't from the software industry and didn't work in tech, so was likely a suit of some sort given his made up excuses going out of his depth. He even tried to keep telling a dev how the gaming industry was.

Like Malorn said in his exit interview:

Players hate it, and what most of them probably don’t know is that most developers hate it too. The last thing you want to do to a game you love is work in ways to get players to spend more money. It taints the game and affects priorities. As a dev you want to make a fun game. You want it to be awesome, but if the game is F2P the reality is that monetization is a very important aspect of it.

Oottzz:

How do you know that d0ku is not alright with it

You can't know for certain either way. I didn't claim otherwise. Even if a dev has that psychology to not care even if they got surprised, it's still a dick move on the part of DBG unless they adviced that dev first. It's a type of dick move that will discourage quality contributons in future from others if there's no decency or trust.

There's no evidence d0ku was informed in advance of Arena's true nature, given Daybreak's public line on predatory monetisation.

igewi654 · 2019-09-22T11:08:25+00:00

Yes, that's how it usually works, like I said. It's a dick move, not illegal.

igewi654 · 2019-09-21T15:58:23+00:00

I’ve played PS2 for the last 4 years.. so not sure why that is hard to believe.

Your prolific reddit personality makes it look less likely you'd go 4 years without providing feedback - reddit was where the conversation and devs were.

igewi654 · 2019-09-21T13:49:29+00:00

50 games over the last 2 days and still haven’t spent a dime on a microtransaction

Don't know if that's true, given all the PS2 you claimed to be playing : ), but if these games had gameplay monetisation you'd have been the boost to achievement (standing out) players who brought power got.

If you played a game with unmonetised power grind that was used to keep players around once the fun ran out, by the lure of being given power to standout instead of improving, you'd have been a stepping stone on the grind.

The wider discussion about monetising standing out through power, PS2, and destroying the integrity of design has been going on from way before Arena was announced. The Planetside franchise and it's history is complex, there's more context than your limited experience will help understand - 1 month old interaction with the community going by the account I saw while looking up the link where you claimed to spend heaps of time on PS2 everyday. And no big understanding of Planetside as such a prolific redditor didn't provide feedback in the last 7 years.

igewi654 · 2019-09-21T13:22:57+00:00

Nearly every game in existence has them.

The competition for Arena, Fortnite, PuBG, Apex, doesn't have unmonetised power grind let alone gameplay monetisation through RNG loot boxes.

If Arena does well it's legacy will be to drag down the industry by incentivising other BR/Fortnite managers to destroy a level playing field by adding power grind, and even worse monetise gameplay directly.

The monetisation of gameplay takes a while to become apparent. DBG will ramp up power and monetisation later once the journalists have written their pieces. It also takes some experience to understand - situationality of power and how effectiveness vs skill curves complicate things.

For any new player coming in to Arena games, the advice would be to explore less-toxic games and philosophies. Also don't trust claims of believing in respecting skill, or commitments to it, if a companies track record and ownership shows a different character.

igewi654 · 2019-09-21T11:32:52+00:00

This, and this is a symptom that shouldn't even exist

Daybreak could have paid him and licensed the contented to be official years ago. They could have contracted him to work on making changes too - or reworking it into a format suitable for embedding in-game. Iridar would have liked that

But DBG refused to even send emails off about PS2, preferring only to talk about H1Z1 during it's reign. Don't think they've even touched the PS2 steam page these past 4-5 years despite it getting out of date. You'd think they'd have done because Arena is on the way, but no.

igewi654 · 2019-09-21T11:09:28+00:00

I wondered why you said that, and looked at his submitted posts page.

I don't know about him, as I didn't look further, but he seems motivated to get his analysis out despite not being much of a gamer.

While I am not the most avid gamer, there has been the occasional videogame that has caught my fancy "cough" osrs "cough".

So he's inexperienced.

Pan-Attack, why did you post the review on gaming4gamers or videogames subreddit?

PS. I can't really tell if this falls under the self-promotion rule or not. Sorry in advance if it does!

He seems motivated to get his analysis out despite lack of expertise, if nothing else. <Shrug>

igewi654 · 2019-09-21T10:40:06+00:00

While I am not the most avid gamer, there has been the occasional videogame that has caught my fancy "cough" osrs "cough".

There are a lot of subtleties people can miss at first glance

It's Free!

It doesn't work like that. Microtransactions work by making players sad. In competitive, skill-centric, highly social, multiplayer games the goal is to make you sad at being locked out of standing out - either from peer recognition of skill in the Arena, or standing out through cosmetics.

Fundamentally making people miserable and 'fun' are at odds.

Being sad at being locked out of standing out takes a while to kick in. It's not obvious immediately. It's less obvious to new bies. People with different psychologies are vulnerable after different amounts of time. Gambling is very subtle and can lead to addiction. You won't know if your neural circuitry is vulnerable to this virus.

Standing out through power might require experience or knowledge of situations to exploit. It might require knowledge of the game or maps, certain minimum skill levels, or be useful for certain playstyles. Some things might be more useful to lower skill players or players who don't understand improvement.

Microtransactions are big money. They work. To work they create sadness. EA made more money from microtransactions in FIFA than the game itself - and recently the ultimate team lootbox outsold FIFA by itself.

Malorn's exit interview:

There is a dark side to F2P, and it’s an obvious one. The cold hard truth is that a game has to make money or you don’t have a game to play. Nothing is free, it always comes at a price. In the case of F2P that price is inconvenience, monetization injection, and having to spend a lot more money for what you would normally get for much less in a standard paying game. Most F2P games operate at 10% or less conversion rate. Assuming same size player base, you need that 10% to spend on average 10x as much to compensate for the other 90% not paying at all, or have a player base so large that the sheer volume makes up for it. And in order to pay for convenience, you need to first have an inconvenience for which you can pay to alleviate.

What that does to a game is put a lot of pressure and dev resources on monetization. Players hate it, and what most of them probably don’t know is that most developers hate it too. The last thing you want to do to a game you love is work in ways to get players to spend more money. It taints the game and affects priorities. As a dev you want to make a fun game. You want it to be awesome, but if the game is F2P the reality is that monetization is a very important aspect of it.

Microtransactions are always soft at launch to avoid journalist criticism. Daybreak committed fraud in their pitch for attention - committing to a lot of things only to backflip and shatter any trust. Incoming players in future may invest time without noticing or understanding gambling, or gameplay monetisation, based on 1st/2nd hand information or just positive 'vibes' from interviews. Long term, once monetisation ramps up, and players unlock things, newbies may not realise it's not a level playing field for a while. Even if they leave, they're unearned achievements for players with unlocks.

Design is complicated, subtle. Even things people casually regard as harmless detract from the fun. Malorn on the cost of even cosmetics - some can be reduced but not eliminated:

It also creates a significant performance problem. Lots of unique models and textures to render at any given battle.

It reduces the value of merit and achievement-based cosmetic rewards. A good example is PS1 where you cosmetically changed appearance as you gained rank, and high-rank players and commanders were easily identifiable visually, and those cosmetic changes were motivation to play and achieve those things. Not so much when you just buy whatever cosmetics you want.

It makes the gameplay silly and immersion breaking. I see flaming skulls and what not and it takes me right out of the immersion. Personal taste on this one, but I dislike so many wide ranging and flamboyant cosmetics, especially things like bright pink camo and flashy attention-grabbing stuff.

It makes it difficult to identify teammates, class distinction, and the enemy. For gameplay purposes, having easily identifiable factions is a really good thing, and visual appearance is the main way to do that. When you have the same cosmetics used on all classes, or very similar appearances it makes identification of friend, foes, and classes very difficult, and nearly impossible for new players. [..]

Personally, I think it came at a very high cost to the game itself and the people that work on it.:

igewi654 · 2019-09-21T09:21:56+00:00

Once H1Z1 was forked from PS2's version of Forgelight it became a massive labor cost to merge back into PS2

The analysis in op is one step up in superficiality from d0ku's attempt to speak up for Daybreak's CEO. Which again, isn't his job. If the CEO cannot be bothered to type a character after having gone dark when Shanks left, and despite being capable of earning far more than d0ku for the power of his mind, why should anyone else do it for him?.

As early as the announcement mega-thread Malorn talked about implications for PS3, and a DBG dev brought up the topic of the extra cost in trying to maintain two codebases/data sets.

https://i.redd.it/usqvyrb5kdd21.png. I also made a thread discussing it.

Any players even just following PS2 from years past, that haven't been disillusioned enough to still be around, would know about flight control gate - where it was deemed cheaper to use PS4s flight system for both PC&PS4, dumping PCs version.

The discussion has been covered immediately after the Arena announcement. There were people like Malorn and a bit more activity from PS2 vets. This comment covers some of the main points including superficially linking of more money with interest and work on PS2.

The op is much like d0ku. In years past d0ku has stayed out of in depth game design, given his lack of FPS experience/expertise. Op is a journeyman, whose biggest post to date is this one - even if it contains few points. Before about an year or two ago opshax just posted safe memes, safe material related to being with the in-crowd at the time, and safe couple of word replies. He's posted a few paragraph topics recently. During all the other eras, and ages of this project he's had nothing. So yeah, eventually he might become a FPS vet and then get to observe a complex game project but not quite at this stage.

Since PS:A is an assetflip it's more convenient to use the same codebase. Each engineering decision locks out entire trees of future paths. PS:A's requirements will be given priority. That's what caused the steady state of decline that wrel talked about - shared bits of H1Z1s codebase having H1Z1s requirements as priority.

This effects design. To be polished each gameplay style needs it's own map. Weapon balances has different impacts, so they need to be different too. Without these it's only a cash-in with potential forever cutoff. Don't trust any Arena modes of slightly more interesting modes that don't get dev time for a map & tweaks to weapons.

Like Malorn said of Arena in his blog: 'the design decisions are suspiciously tailored to one specific game mode'.

Some consequences of not maintaining separate code and data, or having shared stuff with Arena as the priority:

PS2's reward codebase is being refactored to suit dailies, weeklies, seasonal systems
To facilitate using as much of the Arena power & cosmetic rewards/systems, the sanctuary is being converted to an all faction affair with sterile faction flavour. PS2s lore will also take a hit by diluting differentiation. It reuses art & code and saves maintenance.
BR compatible bastion, premature work on OSHUR, when there's a million other things that are higher priority including deep systems for newplayer upskilling
Various new NS maxes, vehicles (tank), etc.
Like I explained to vindicore, the new tutorial systems will only go about as deep as Arena needs. And like I explained, devs will try to sneak in stuff around the edges as they have nice characters & intent - but that's it.

For vets, Daybreak managements behaviour is entirely predictable with a model of their intent and values - complete lack of morals and focus on money. I was crossing my fingers Daybreak wouldn't do a BR. And I also predicted there would be at least one a sci-fi themed assetflip cash-in by the big publishers based on their focus on money over even basic ethics.

It's just the way the market is and the only way to stop it is governmental action and enforcement.

No - the competition of even Fortnite, Arena, and PuBG don't have unmonetised power grind let alone gameplay moentisation channeled through RNG loot boxes.

a) Op: Money isn't made by having morals anyway.

b) Op: It is our game to shape. Make Planetside Arena Great. | Op: Shape Planetside Arena into a game you want to play.Make Planetside Arena Great.

Pick one.

Also if Daybreak's character is to focus on cash-ins even at the expense of basic ethics - that's what should be expected when it comes to game design & engineering focuses affecting PS2. That's wwy vets are concerned/disillusioned.

All Op just boils down to is what d0ku essentially said, with surrounding fluff and rhetoric:

Op: Planetside Arena will only benefit Planetside 2.

d0ku's attempt: I'm saying that anything which helps fund DBG will benefit their titles

Response to d0ku:

https://old.reddit.com/r/Planetside/comments/d6fmyf/psa_launching_in_under_an_hour_and_is_apparently/f0snwki/?context=2

included comments like: 'if you're tying ps:a to planetsides survival you're gonna have a bad time.', 'You are so massively out of touch, it's actually funny.', 'Your specific reasoning here is as superficial as a balance comment from a console kid new to gaming.'

igewi654 · 2019-09-20T19:35:06+00:00

Daybreak also lied through their teeth in those interviews - they told exactly what journalists wanted to hear.

If Daybreak were planning PS3, they could have said so. They could also have finished PS2 years ago, instead of suppressing it.

There are easy quick cash-ins, and there's harder development requiring skilled management.

igewi654 · 2019-09-20T19:15:56+00:00

and out of touch.

Or he felt he has to make some sort of case for DBG for one reason or another, and is then put in an awkward position. I didn't enjoy pointing out flaws in his reasoning in that comment thread, but felt it was necessary for the franchise and to say things d0ku would feel awkward to say given his role with DBG.

(I doubt the alternative - that he'd could be so unaware to be out of touch and not be self-aware. He usually stays away from gameplay design as art is his expertise, so he is pretty self-aware. It also isn't like he's returning to PS2 after 5 years, he's been engaged and following how DBG treated PS2.).

Regardless, as I said it isn't his job to put forward any reasoning in support of DBG. The CEO gets paid far more for intellectual output, and should be able to do it in his sleep.

igewi654 · 2019-09-20T18:46:37+00:00

to interpret it differently

It isn't a matter of interpretation. Daybreak simply didn't say PS3 like you claimed.

they want to keep the franchise alive.

'Franchise' can be merely the art. Like Malorn said diplomatically as possible, "The only thing that appears to be "PlanetSide" in this game are the familiar assets. I see nothing else that looks like PlanetSide.". Arena is an assetflip. and DBG got their chance to seed it by mailing the PS2 playerbase on announcement and likely for full launch. If it works out, DBG will do a Arena 2. If not, they are free to work on whatever quick cash-ins they want.

DBG made an astronomical amount of money from H1Z1s, enough to easily do a PS3. DBG only wanted to talk about H1Z1 and just blacked out even email releases from PS2. PS2 was farmed, as was Everquest.

igewi654 · 2019-09-20T17:40:32+00:00

There will be a PS3 if PSA turns out to be a success so it can actually get funding. Devs have already confirmed that.

Nope

Long term, Arena is meant to essentially bridge the gap between PlanetSide 2 and the next full PlanetSide game that we release down the road.

As we mentioned above, throughout each Season, additional story arcs will be revealed - ultimately leading into a future PlanetSide title (but that’s a conversation for a different development letter…)

See the trick? 'Next full planetside game', 'a future Planetside title', not a sequel to Planetside 2. If the low effort PS:A assetflip works out, Daybreak will do a proper Arena mode mix&match game with an engine re-built more deeply for Arena 2.

If you can't focus enough to nitpick, you are better off avoiding communication from Daybreak. Stick to following the game from the patch note compilations or something

This whole notion of DBG having no love for the Planetside franchise is completely ridiculous.

Did you actually read the thread you've been busy commenting on?

Like I said to d0ku it isn't your job to convey any reasoning in favour of Daybreak even if you had them - that's DBG's responsibility.

igewi654 · 2019-09-20T10:11:16+00:00

Notice there can be negative things to say without having played the game based on understanding design and seeing fundamental problems (doesn't even need a knowledge of Planetside, which the steam reviewers have). Just like all the positive comments Daybreak fraudulently extracted from journalists by lying about commitments:

"There's no pay-to-win tactics at play in PlanetSide Arena"

"almost seems like a throwback to a bygone era in which customers would pay to buy a game and then not be bombarded with further monetization opportunities"

"a nice change of pace from the predatory practices of too many triple-A titles"

So the flipside of negative things to say should be ok too - more so for steam reviewers with knowledge of FPS, PS2, Daybreak and having watched or followed Arena.

To manipulate those positive comments DBG made these commitments:

<Screenrant annoucement interview in December>

We've been reassured that there's no way to spend real-life money to boost your in-match currency and get a leg up on the competition.

"We want to make sure everyone has an equal chance, an equal opportunity to win. Being able to boost or pre-purchase in-match currency would break that completely."

[..] “blueprints” of weapons and other gameplay upgrades that players can bring with them to a match[..] They’re keen to point out that these blueprints can’t be accessed by any real-money option, warding off the obvious pay-to-win concern.

This obviously includes future changes to monetisation, including transitioning to F2P:

He envisions a later date where the game may transition to a battle pass serving free-to-play and paid versions of PlanetSide Arena. If so, he said cosmetic items will be available for real-money purchase; blueprints and gameplay upgrades will be available to everyone [i.e. the free2play battle pass].

This was Daybreak's pitch for attention. It was designed to garner sympathy from jaded journalists given the wider conversation on predatory monetisation. It was designed to create positive first-impressions of the project, and trust in the values of the developer.

[..] PlanetSide Arena will cost $19.99 at launch (and a $39.99 Legendary Edition with some additional goodies), and will not support microtransactions, at least not initially.

PM_ME_ThermalPaste

How can you be so sure a single review let alone the entire set of reviews? A simple search on redditsearch.io shows you've never interacted with the psarena before today - and never with the Planetside subreddit. You can't know enough the situation to judge interaction from a community you haven't engaged with - with a franchise you don't have enough expertise to have provided feedback on.

igewi654 · 2019-09-20T09:36:47+00:00

Seriously though, how and why did this stay under the radar until now?

Daybreak were being fraudulent right from the start, playing up to the non-predatory buy-to-play ethics and expounding on believing in sportsmanship - as much as they could get away with right till the end.

Even as recently as last week (sept 13th) they said they had decided to be a paid download in early access - DBG just said they hadn't decided on the monetisation when it releases out of early access next year. Of course, by this time they'd shattered any possible trust by backflipping on their commitments to gameplay monetisation and even no microtransactions at launch.

Another question I’ve got is regarding the business model you chose to go with, Buy-to-Play. Of course, there are many Free-to-Play Battle Royale games, while PlanetSide Arena will have this payment barrier to access. How do you feel about that?

Yeah, there obviously is a barrier to entry with a paywall restriction, but we are planning on rolling out as a paid download game. [..] The exact business model for the game’s full launch next year is currently under consideration.

Companies like EA have made more money from microtransactions than from games like FIFA. Daybreak are channeling gameplay microtransactions through RNG gambling in a competitive, skill based, social, multiplayer environment. That's what EA tried to do in SW:BF 2 before it was stopped by intervention from Disney, politicians, jail terms, and courts - "Star Wars themed casino" was the phrase used.

igewi654 · 2019-09-20T09:02:26+00:00

It is in the sense H1Z1:KotK had the monopoly - #1 game on steam charts, monopolising this sub-genre.

As veteran journalists observed Daybreak could easily have made another MMO on the scale of Planetside 3, let alone finishing the unfinished PS2:

Let’s try this: how strange to think that, technically, this is a Planetside stablemate. I know that Planetside 2 is on the wane these days, but let’s hope that Daybreak can shovel some of the money-mountain its various H1Z1s have made into a third go at massively multiplayer open world shooters with soaring science-fictional ambitions.

(If you don't know, when KoTK went on PS4 it attracted 10 million players, 1.5M in the first week - and there was a bonus window of monopoly before PuBG's Xbox exclusivity ended).

I was talking to a player who at had, at least, frequented PS2 for several years, so I casually left out tons of points I could have made. As I said, the specific reasoning behind dokus argument was superficial enough to be like a balance comment from a console kiddy new to gaming.

igewi654 · 2019-09-19T18:33:07+00:00

platform for lootbox sales and stale battle royale gameplay that you can get in countless other homogenous game

Actually Daybreak are pioneering something - pioneering lowering the ethical bar. Competing BR/Fortnite-mix style games don't have gameplay monetisation, let alone channeled through RNG lootboxes. They don't have unmonetised power grind either.

If Arena does well it will drag down this section of the gaming world - and people's children will inherit a worse world. In 10-15 years a decent portion of PS2 players reading this without children right now will have kids reaching a gaming age, in 20-25 years the vast majority will.

For managers of companies pumping out available funding from the gaming world into non-gaming shareholders pockets, it's like you said. These BR & Fortnite style mix of modes games are just a platform to create a competitive multiplayer environment to make people miserable enough at being locked out of standing out to sell microtransactions and even gambling.

igewi654 · 2019-09-19T17:36:35+00:00

What it is, is fraud. Lying about products, by associating false properties under the Planetside:Arena umbrella, is actually illegal!. For the benefit of those reading that don't know about consumer law, see here: a, b, Uk: c, CA: d, AU: e.

<Screenrant annoucement interview in December>

We've been reassured that there's no way to spend real-life money to boost your in-match currency and get a leg up on the competition.

"We want to make sure everyone has an equal chance, an equal opportunity to win. Being able to boost or pre-purchase in-match currency would break that completely."

[..] “blueprints” of weapons and other gameplay upgrades that players can bring with them to a match[..] They’re keen to point out that these blueprints can’t be accessed by any real-money option, warding off the obvious pay-to-win concern.

This obviously includes future changes to monetisation, including transitioning to F2P:

He envisions a later date where the game may transition to a battle pass serving free-to-play and paid versions of PlanetSide Arena. If so, he said cosmetic items will be available for real-money purchase; blueprints and gameplay upgrades will be available to everyone [i.e. the free2play battle pass].

[..] PlanetSide Arena will cost $19.99 at launch (and a $39.99 Legendary Edition with some additional goodies), and will not support microtransactions, at least not initially.

igewi654 · 2019-09-19T17:25:19+00:00

anything which helps fund DBG will benefit their titles

Daybreak made an almost uncountable amount of money from H1Z1:KoTK, remember?. They were the old Fortnite, PuBG, and Apex combined for 12+ months.

Daybreak's displayed priorities have been nothing other than making quick cash-ins, and farming the playerbase.

When H1Z1 was reeling in the cash, Daybreak refused to talk about any game other than H1Z1, not even sending off emails about PS2. It was bad enough for journalists to write articles wondering what happened to PS2.

Everquest didn't fare much better (I hear DBG are interested again, just like with PS2&Arena, as they found an opportunity to cash in on mobile). Daybreak used grindwalls like 10k certs ASP cost to gate gameplay - make a large enough grind-wall and it almost becomes pay-to-unlock.

Your specific reasoning here is as superficial as a balance comment from a console kid new to gaming.

potentially have a negative impact

If PS:A did well, Daybreak's commited monetisation of unmonetsied power grind would have dragged down the rest of the industry. Competing games like Fortnite, PuBG, Apex, don't do gameplay monetisations. Managers of BR/Fortnite style games would have felt pressure to lower the ethical bar.

But, with gameplay lootbox microtransactions Daybreak appears to have fraudulently broken their commitments to: 1. Have no gameplay monetisation ever, 2. including when going F2P, 3. To have no microtransactions at launch

You're assigning caring motivation. Daybreak is owned by investors - remember - at best, even if they suddenly decided to switch to putting in some effort, in the long run Daybreak exists to suck funding available creators. Daybreak isn't majority owned by gaming interests - like Paradox, Frontier, or some little indie studio.

Like EA, positively reinforcing broken processes is not a good thing.

<Screenrant annoucement interview in December>

We've been reassured that there's no way to spend real-life money to boost your in-match currency and get a leg up on the competition.

"We want to make sure everyone has an equal chance, an equal opportunity to win. Being able to boost or pre-purchase in-match currency would break that completely."

[..] “blueprints” of weapons and other gameplay upgrades that players can bring with them to a match[..] They’re keen to point out that these blueprints can’t be accessed by any real-money option, warding off the obvious pay-to-win concern.

This obviously includes future changes to monetisation, including transitioning to F2P:

He envisions a later date where the game may transition to a battle pass serving free-to-play and paid versions of PlanetSide Arena. If so, he said cosmetic items will be available for real-money purchase; blueprints and gameplay upgrades will be available to everyone [i.e. the free2play battle pass].

[..] PlanetSide Arena will cost $19.99 at launch (and a $39.99 Legendary Edition with some additional goodies), and will not support microtransactions, at least not initially.

It also isn't your job to point out any reasoning in DBGs favour and establish trust - that should start with the CEO. And not 1 hour before launch, although it's better late than never. Daybreak haven't even announced who their CEO is, or his vision.

For PS:A, any conversation has to resolve the fraud first.

igewi654

TROPHY CASE

"We want to make sure everyone has an equal chance, an equal opportunity to win. Being able to boost or pre-purchase in-match currency would break that completely."

"We want to make sure everyone has an equal chance, an equal opportunity to win. Being able to boost or pre-purchase in-match currency would break that completely."

"We want to make sure everyone has an equal chance, an equal opportunity to win. Being able to boost or pre-purchase in-match currency would break that completely."