simply solution, which is already present in many games, even without this system - you get punished if you leave the match. You get cooldown before you can join another match,m you lose your rank more than you would if you simply lost, you get bad rep stat queued with other bad rep players only etc.
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then it's a simple counting of gains and losses. if they gain more monies on players who starts buying microtransactions more often than they lose on players leaving or never buying the game from their business perspective answer is simple. Especially if you just leave - you already paid for the game, it is more important to keep player who bought game and keeps paying than keep player who never pays again yet uses server bandwitch ;p
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Paying small amounts to companies is not inherently a bad thing, but since all companies are profit driven in the end, it's not like they can be trusted to keep it sensible. It's very easy for it to be reduced to "Whoever pays more, wins".
Some might say things like "Well you can unlock everything with enough time and no payments :}", but if the matchmaking system is designed to squeeze money out of you by pairing you with players that have paid more than you, it makes that statement irrelevant. This is because there are always people that pay more than you.
With all the buzz in deep machine learning, you can even envisage companies investing in algorithms that let you win x times by being the person that has paid more, but force you to lose y times by being the less financially invested player - finding that sweet spot that just turns your game into gambling.
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Pretty much this. This kind of matchmaking will infuriate both sides, because as a lesser ranked or worse equipped player you're going to be frustrated and not enjoy the game, and as a higher ranked or more experienced player you will have to tolerate ineffective teammates who can't operate at the expected level and may lose matches due to the system.
Like draconian DRM, this idea is totally glazing over the drawbacks it generates. While it does provide a form of lure for struggling or lower players, it may cause the playerbase to retain less of its higher ranked players for frustration reasons. It doesn't guarantee microtransaction purchases, as it's just as likely to repel people from playing as they will potentially see the equipment as "Pay 2 Win", and see it as a cheap cop-out. People may be less inclined to buy even during sales for smaller more tempting things, recognising the slippery slope and how fruitless just small purchases are if they want to even have a remote shot at things.
It's a very artificial way of stimulating purchases that treats players so much like a commodity that it's like the time that live-updated in-game advert placements tried to be a thing. It feels dishonest to the point that I feel the detriments will far outweigh the benefits (again, much like draconian DRM oversights).
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that's actually ridiculous. i hope this never gets implemented in a game. but i guess it would be naive to think it won't.
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I won't count how many times when some publisher came up with some anticustomer idea I heard "well I hope it never gets implemented", "I hope it will fail and noone else does it ever again". And guess what - in most cases it will work and will get implemented, because it works and turns the profit.
So yeah, I agree - it would be naive to count that it won't simply because it's ridiculous ;p
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Right on bro.
American Gaming Industry is finished. People have lost faith in it.
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as stated in my comment above - simply solution, which is already present in many games, even without this system - you get punished if you leave the match. You get cooldown before you can join another match,m you lose your rank more than you would if you simply lost, you get bad rep stat queued with other bad rep players only etc.
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No, not really. That's only for people who abandon a match before it finishes. "I get matched an leave more frustrated than ever that's the result." appears to refer to how one feels after a match is over - it has nothing to do abandoning matches.
Your other reply above was in response to people completely losing interest in the game itself - also nothing to do with abandoning matches.
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if you leave the game frustrated instead of paying - nothing is lost, you would most likelly not pay anyway, less server bandwitch used. And they get 60$ from you anyway at release, they couldn't care less that you give up the game and save the spot for someone who will pay 60$ + pay microtransactions ;p
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I have never paid for a single piece of DLC and currently have no plans to. If it was something really good, like a complete game addition with new levels and a lot of new content that they could of sold as a separate game, but was a little too short, I may consider, but everything else I see as being really dumb and feel people are suckers and foolish for buying. I will never support this type of content.
When I play multiplayer games like Counter Strike or H1Z1:KOTK, I use the default basic skins that you start with even if I am given skins for free because I do not want to support this and encourage people to buy them. People see me in the game and think I am a new player with no skill because I am using the default skins and then they get upset when I kill them, it's pretty funny.
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you focus just on cosmetics here, like presented in CS:GO ;) more and more (even AAA) games incorpoprate microtransactions (or DLCs) that actually give you better stats aka better win chances (latest example being Battlefront 2). Ofc if you are pro player with free items and you encounter noob with paid items - you will most likelly win, but if you encounter someone at the same skill level as you are but suddenly his guns deal 10% more damage and his helmet has 5% chance of preventing headshot you will lose against him more often that you win.
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I have never played a multiplayer game where you could buy items to give you an advantage over other players. Depending on how bad in makes the game, I either wouldn't play or I would just deal with it and play at a disadvantage if the game can still be fun. Players should be ashamed to have to buy an advantage and I think they should get laughed at and shamed for buying these items. It may be cruel, but I think it will only help the future of multiplayer gaming.
I mostly play single players games and the multiplayer games I play are skill based competitive games where the last thing the developers would want to do is allow someone to have an advantage over another player because it would cause most of their players to stop playing.
If I knew a game did this before I bought it, I would not buy it. I think everyone should boycott these type of games.
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thing is you cannot really know - you don't see netcode, Activision (or any other company) may claim thewy are not doing it and never will, but still do it and you cannot prove them wrong. You may be aware player that will not be influenced by it,. but you gotta keep in mind that aware gamers are minority, most of profits come from all kinds of casuals. If a company pulled this off sure it may have lost you and few other invested and aware gamers, but if in return they would start earning much more from casuals it would be well worth loss for thrm. And if other companies see that it is worth to discourage aware players if in return they can milk casuals for much more they would follow. And soon you will be left with much smaller choice of unbiased games that will prefer giving you 100% fair chances over potential bigger profit.
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Whoops, guess I didn't make myself clear. I was not referring to games that do what you mentioned in the OP, I was referring to all multiplayer games that allow players to buy an advantage over other players. I would not play a pay to win game and would hope that everyone else would boycott them as well.
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considering amount of preorders for Battlefront 2 it's unlikelly that majority would act the way you do ;P Like I said - you may be aware player but majority are casuals. and casuals will not boycott product because of anticonsumer practices ;p
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lol, people who preorder are just as bad as people who spend money on microtransactions. What is the gaming community coming too? Countless preorders, pay to win, and neverending early access games, most of which are just cash grabs that never come close to being complete games. Also, trash games that are made only for achievements or cards and the people who continue to buy them because they care more about playing the Steam social network leveling game.
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What is the gaming community coming to?
To a bunch of idiots with tons of disposable income and/or no damn given about such things as basic common sense falling for every anti-consumer practice the big boys shove down their throats like the sheeple they are.Then they becomes the norm and we all end up fucked as a result.
Thats the long and short of it,anyway.
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just don't push it into some new IP but to something people already love, play and buy in millions upon millions of copies. Like idk... freaking CoD? You think that with level of fanboyism for CoD (especially among more casual players) they would end up with "not enough players" if they pulled it off? I seriously doubt it.
It's also quite significant that patent was clearly written mostly for multiplayer shooters, only mentioning that "it can be used for other genres as well".
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Destiny for example. Or any Blizzard game (remeber it's not just Activision but rather Activision Blizzard), most of current Blizzard games are multiplayer ones with absolutelly crazy populations, easilly on CoD level if not above. And especially considering level of fanboyism for Blizzard games and how people are willing to deffend they beloved developer almost with their own life, it would be even easier to pull this off with any Blizz game. It doesn't even have to be Pay2Win, as many blizz games offer only cosmetics (but not all, queuing against good player with champion you don't have in HotS may encourage you to buy this champion, queuing against a player with full legendaries deck in HS who rolls over you may encourage you to get more booster packs) - but if any player without many cosmetics is queued much more likelly with ppl with great skins, more people will buy these cosmetics anyway. Not all of course, there are people who will never pay for skins at all, but they are not the target here. There are also people who may or may not buy the skins. And if these people will be much more likelly to be queued with skinned players they are more likelly to purchase skins themselves compared to pure random matchmaking. So again - either way it's a profit.
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The really bad part is that not only are they potentially matching players with those that "outrank" them but also put "higher tier" players with "lower tier" making the game less fun for everyone...the players getting dominated and the players that get no challenge. Meh, doesn't really bother me as I rarely play multiplayer games unless it is with other streaming friends or my hubby. Hopefully, players leave the game never to return if this does get implemented or not pay for a game that also has pay to win microtransaction just on principle. :/ In a perfect world, maybe....
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I do not play multiplayer games myself (especially not shooters, I may sometimes play Starcraft match and will play Hearthstone for dailies, but that's it), but nonetheless even if it wouldn't affect me as it is I find it ridicullous bullshit. Also who is to say it will stop on multiplayer shooters if it ends up bringing profits? Why not implement it then to other multiplayer genres, why not then to singleplayer games (purposefully chifting gtame difficulty in singleplayer game in order to encourage you to pay for microtransactions? to lesser degree it's already what Shadow of War did - put up a lot of gring for you in act 4 if you want real ending - or you can just pay for microtransactions).
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Hey there's one silver-lining I can think of...
Activision having actually secured the patent also should guarantee us a full 20 years before any of the other publishers can do the same thing (at least without them having to pay Activision out the ass to license the thing in the meantime, or undertaking a major legal risk and financial burden trying to develop something that's "similar" but just not-similar enough infringe on the existing patent)
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Or they just do it in a slightly different ways that doesn't infringe on this particular patent.
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Last sentence dude.
Unless you mean something so radically different that it doesn't bear any risk of infringement, which would also be known as "company does something else that is bad" and thats just like--constant
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problem here is that unlike any physical patents you cannot really be sure what other company used and if they are using it at all. If you patent let's say new CPU you can find it physically in some phone that didn't pay for using it. On the other hand you cannot access netcode algorithms used by a company X to make sure they do not violate your patent. Especially is company X denies any usage of such algorithms (they may be lying). So any company may start developing such solutions in secret and simply never tell anyone, while still profiting.
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I guess I was a bit distracted and didn't make it to the end. :P
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not really - way to fight it is go the mobile games way - sell big chunks of ingame currency cheaper than small chunks. you buy 500000 coins instead of 1000, if you did credit card fraud on 500000 you will be caught before you manage to spend it. Also keep in mind we are discussing premium games with microtransactions - you gotta invest 60$ in the game first and then start getting milked by micros.
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When I read things like this, it makes me so glad that I don't like to play MP games.
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Same here, since I quit with WoW I barely touch multiplayer games, now only casual HearthStone without any investment, farming low levels for relax, and ocassionally SC2 match with friends. But never again highly competitive and time-demanding multiplayer game. Still even if this doesn't affect me it is still utter bullshit. Also if it turns out to be profitable in multiplayer shooters it will go into all multiplayer games. if it turns profitable there, it can go into singleplayer (dynamically shifting game difficulty to encourage you to purchase sth to make game easier or less grindy - we already have first step with Shadow of War where you either have to grind a lot in last act or to buy lots of lootboxes to get real game ending),
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The only "multiplayer" game I'm trying a bit right now is ESO and that's mostly because I don't actually need to interact with other players. And the occasional references to the crown store and crates are already starting to turn me off.
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This can mostly work in their alone, and mostly CoD, where the player demographic lacks the sufficient mental capacity to understand the "bad matchmaking for me because the level/skill/gear difference is way too much = quit and find a more suitable room" concept and try to bang their head against the wall instead of beg their parents for money to buy their way to the top.
Heck, this probably wouldn't even work in Destiny either, and there the payer demographic is only ever slightly more mature, mostly because they have to understand concepts like "if you run in there alone like the idiot you are, you will get killed and not get loot/XP".
Still, it should be interesting for ISOLOVETOUSECAPS to pay the patent to implement the same system in Battlegrounds. P2W items is one of the two blatantly money-ripping tricks he did not use yet. (The other is DLC overload, also known as the PayDay 2 method.)
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Even they put micro transaction on the game, i'm not interested with that stuff on playing MP (When i have the game). So, i'll get more time from this on campaign.
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Yyyy OK~~~
I will now NOT buy any Activision game.
Vote with wallet people.
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Matching junior unexperienced players with veteran players, in order for newbie to see veterans using all kinds of awesome microtransaction gear and newbie wanting this gear himself thus encouraging him to pay for it.
That is nothing new happens a lot now in games that encourage people to quit playing or buy stuff to get at least same level of gear/power.They also use the same thing with vanity items, sure they don't impact the gameplay but surely people who see others with such things buy them based on others using them and them wanting them because they like how it looks.
If anyone is shocked by this then I would say they don't have much of a grasp on reality and how they could not see this coming.It's clear that microtransactions are making money and now Publisher's will find ways to encourage it even more like F2P games do only they usually encourage it with super long grinds and buy stuff to skip it.
Fine example GTA V made more selling shark cards than they did selling record amounts of the game.Publisher's see this and now they want a piece of the action now it's just a matter of testing out ways to max those profits using microtransactions.
Ahh and to think at one time people hated paying a few bucks for horse armor, now they shell out twice as much for vanity crap.Games are changing like it or not won't stop that and proclaiming you won't buy this or support that will only make it worse since they will have to make up that lost revenue and microtransactions seem to fill that gap.
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I'm sure this is already in several games.
"We promise this is just for lols we would never use this system"
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as stated before in this discussion - they can tell whatever they want. It's not like we don't know video game publishers for utterly lying all the time, plus as it's invisible backend system, even more - you cannot see it at all as it's not on disc or in your game files but rather on server side in netcode of the game, publisher can tell you there is no such system, it may be working and you can never prove that it actually does.
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This is just gonna degrade the online experience and drive players away..new & potential players too. I personally try to only buy multiplayer games where you can host your own server. Matchmaking / P2P only games on PC are weak sauce, and I'll only buy them at a serious discount. This P2W garbage isn't going anywhere if we keep buying their games.
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Perhaps, and you've got to evaluate each situation individually but not having a certain skin is a lot less infuriating than being intentionally disadvantaged in a multiplayer game. Cosmetics are optional, but this pay to win trend is way worse and I hope the sales will take a massive hit because if it.
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games like Shadow of War or previously for example Metal Gear Solid V have non-cosmetic microtransactions, actually quite contrary - the more microtransactions you buy the objectively stronger you get in multiplayer mode up to level where basically person who paid the most wins. Sad truth is that aware customers like me and you, people who may decide to screw certain games because of their business practices, we are minority. Majority are casual gamers - people who just buy a few games a year, games they heard of on TV or saw a FB commercial. They do not follow media, they will beww in most cases not even aware of such shenenigans going on, and they most certainly will not boycott a hot new heavilly marketed product.
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RS article: https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/news/how-activision-uses-matchmaking-tricks-to-sell-in-game-items-w509288
Patent file: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=9789406.PN.&OS=PN/9789406&RS=PN/9789406
As for now Activision claims it is Research and Development only and was not yet implemented in any game.
Several examples of it working in matchmaking include:
Matching junior unexperienced players with veteran players, in order for newbie to see veterans using all kinds of awesome microtransaction gear and newbie wanting this gear himself thus encouraging him to pay for it.
System can determnie player profile (aka what type of player he is, if he enjoys sniping, assaulting, supporting etc) and match him with (so also against) highly skilled / better geared players of the same profile so he feels the need to purchase items of their quality to match their effectiveness.
Joining player into game session where purchase of an item will "significantly rise his game enjoyment" (aka matching you in game you cannot win unless you make purchase?). In effect player will get an impression that purchase was very much justified and because of that may encourage future purchases in the future in order "to get similar results"
idk about you but for me it's the new level of bullshit, way above any currently avaiable pay2win models...
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