• burgersc12@mander.xyz
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    20 days ago

    Can’t understand people who spend hundreds of dollars on virtual shit they don’t even own, just a “licence” to rent it. Like how do you spend that much with almost nothing to show for it.

    • Fredselfish@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      Me after realizing it’s me with American Truck Simulator, buying all those DLC and truck packs.

      Was going say your right how stupid, then dawned on me I have done this…😭

        • Fredselfish@lemmy.world
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          20 days ago

          Yeah mostly what I buy when they are released, but with each new release they new job packs. That allows for new delivering.

    • LePoisson@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      Isn’t that literally everyone who owns digital games? All your shit on Steam is a license to use the software, you don’t actually own any of those games.

      I mean, I get the point, cosmetics and such and anything virtual is not tangible in the real world but let’s not pretend we aren’t all doing that with every game we spend money on.

      Having said that, the amount of money companies charge for some of this stuff is outrageous. Luckily, nobody is pointing a gun to your head forcing you to buy it!

      • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net
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        20 days ago

        I’m not disagreeing. But there is a difference.

        Steam servers shutting down doesn’t mean you lose everything. You can backup your games and play offline. You still have the things you purchased.

        MMOs shutting down and your virtual house and pet disappears, forever. Even if you spin up a instance of that MMO, your account doesn’t belong to you and you’ll have to start/recreate your character from scratch. Granted, you own the server so you could give yourself everything and be god. But then you still paid a lot of money for literally nothing.

        • Nelots@lemm.ee
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          20 days ago

          Does paying for a ticket to go to an amusement park or the movies or whatever mean that you wasted money on nothing? Just because you don’t permanently own something doesn’t mean you paid for literally nothing. You paid for the experience. The good times you have over the years playing a game you loved.

          I mean yeah, I’m sure losing everything when the servers shut down would fucking suck, but that doesn’t invalidate the time you’ve experienced up to that point.

          I don’t have the money to throw at games like that, but I do understand it.

    • Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca
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      20 days ago

      It’s no different than spending thousands on travel or hundreds to watch movies at the theater. You’re paying for the experience and entertainment, not something physical.

    • ValenThyme@reddthat.com
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      20 days ago

      things can only be enjoyed if you trade money for physical objects then?

      Cuz my partner has gotten many many hundreds of hours of enjoyment from the few hundred bucks they have ‘wasted’ on things like Fallout76 furniture and stuff. Eventually she will stop playing and ‘lose’ all that stuff.

      I personally think the many hundred hours of happy playtime is well worth it. It’s her favorite way to relax after work. We don’t have a lot of space for her to build real castles but she spends sooo much of her time enjoying building virtual ones.

      How is it any different from enjoying nice food or drinks with friends?

      • burgersc12@mander.xyz
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        20 days ago

        I guess if you are enjoying the act of spending money that’s good? But like I’m not spending any extra for cosmetics, that money could be spent on having real experiences instead of some bits on a PC that you’ll lose access to within a decade. Paying for DLC and extra content is one thing, but to change the look of virtual space for real cash is insane to me! Personally I have more fun when I don’t spend stupid amounts of money, but to each their own. When the game is free to play, or close to it you can have almost the same experience as someone who decides to spend the money.

        • MonkeyDatabase@lemmy.world
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          20 days ago

          Preach. So many people are fine, in fact, better than fine, paying money for cosmetics. I think p2w games are scum but at least the player gets something from that, whether it be time saved, better gun, or whatever.

          Paying for a skin (which is essentially what this mount is) Nahhhhh. I’ve never spent a dime on either of those, but at least the former has some value imo.

          Spending $90 to look cool in a videogame is something people need to get therapy for. But they’re still playing on official WoW servers, so we already knew that. (Shoutouts to Whitemane and TurtleWow. Neither costs a cent monthly and both respect your time)

          • Randomgal@lemmy.ca
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            20 days ago

            “Time Saved” is not a real thing though. This would imply there was an unavoidable need to spend that time to begin with, there isn’t.

            The game is artificial, if something is time consuming it’s by design. If you’re paying to “save time” in a game, you’re being farmed for money, plain and simple. You ain’t gaining anything, you’re paying to avoid the inconvenience placed there by the people who are selling you a work around for that inconvenience. You’re getting fleeced son.

            • MonkeyDatabase@lemmy.world
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              20 days ago

              The grind to get those depends on whether the player is being farmed for money. If it feels good to play, and you unlock content at a reasonable rate, that’s just called progression, not farming. But if the task is repetitive, unfun, and designed to frustrate players into paying, that’s farming.

              That’s why people shit on EA for BF2. They did the math of the grind and loot boxes, and it came out so something ridiculous, like multiple hundreds of hours to unlock stuff. I used to play R6 Siege and never spent a penny. After a week or so of playing with my friends, we’d have enough in-game currency to buy a new operator. We’d all unlock new characters and try them out. Week after week, it was fun.

              Paying, imo would have ruined that experience because the gameplay is what made it fun. Forcing us to use the ops we chose rather than having a full roster to pick whatever we wanted. Felt almost like deck-building. We were progressing, not farming.

              The caveat is that the new ops tended to be OP. I think the devs probably do it intentionally. This is the P2W part. People could pay day 1 and get the operator with the overtuned kit. They paid to save time, because they want to be the first to use the shiny new toy.

              But again, like I said. I’ll never spend money on either, but at least that person paying is gaining something, an advantage, time saved, instant gratification, more time learning the op. The person buying a pink gun gets … a digital pink gun?

              • Randomgal@lemmy.ca
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                20 days ago

                It seems we disagree on the value of things. For me at least, somebody had to be vaguely creative to create the fucking blue 20$ skin, and the value is not in the non-existent item, but in the very real aesthetic and social experience of owning that skin, a social symbol, like art in your wall. Useless by itself, but it makes you feel things and let’s you say something about yourself to strangers.

                To me that is understandable. Like buying AirPods instead of cheapo earbuds just because they look cool and you want to look preppy with your friends. (Notice the extra cost is not about the sound or the function of the thing, but a out the social value, which I’d say is still value)

                Monetized grind is the exact opposite. You are working to have the privilege of not paying money for the better experience that is already there. People are getting paid to make things WORSE for you, so that you pay money to avoid-displeasure rather than enjoying something new, even if it’s literally just enjoying fleeting vanity.

                Paying to skip is not saving me time. They are giving me a worse quality product and then making me pay to solve the problem that they have a financial incentive to make worse. This is like thinking you’re getting a deal when phone sellers remove the cable from the box. You’re are not, you’re being given a free problem, that you can pay even more to solve.