On Fri, 04 Jul 2025 09:41:28 -0400, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

Hey, did I get here before Ant or rms for once?

* Black Desert
https://store.steampowered.com/app/582660/Black_Desert/
Dunno much about it; it's a free-to-play MMORPG (which is
never a good starting point) with a lot of ad copy focused
on cooking and crafting, and mixed reviews to boot. Apparently
the game is very pay-to-win and there's a lot of grind that
can only be alleviated by buying DLC and MTX. I think
I'll pass.

Even The Number disapproves of this one.

Tried it. Crap. *Pretty* crap, but crap. And now those beautiful graphics
are outdated for sure.

In brief: Very typical, unremarkable MMO. They're whale hunting to make
it profitable I'm sure. Giving it away is *more* reason to avoid it.

--
Zag

What's the point of growing up
if you can't be childish sometimes? ...Terrance Dicks, BBC

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Spalls Hurgenson <[email protected]> looked up from reading the entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

Hey, did I get here before Ant or rms for once?

* Black Desert
https://store.steampowered.com/app/582660/Black_Desert/
Dunno much about it; it's a free-to-play MMORPG (which is
never a good starting point) with a lot of ad copy focused
on cooking and crafting, and mixed reviews to boot. Apparently
the game is very pay-to-win and there's a lot of grind that
can only be alleviated by buying DLC and MTX. I think
I'll pass.

Played it, and it usually has a price tag, it just goes up for free once
a year or so.

It's more pay-for-convenience (P4C) rather than pay-to-win.

There is no way to "win" the game for starters, and unlike many MMOs
with a store, you can earn pretty much anything you can buy and never
pay a dime, especially on a free week like now (only free until July 10)

Even The Number disapproves of this one.

You've taken games that were much, much worse.

Xocyll
--
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably,
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Spalls Hurgenson <[email protected]> wrote:

* Black Desert
https://store.steampowered.com/app/582660/Black_Desert/
Dunno much about it; it's a free-to-play MMORPG (which is
never a good starting point) with a lot of ad copy focused
on cooking and crafting, and mixed reviews to boot. Apparently
the game is very pay-to-win and there's a lot of grind that
can only be alleviated by buying DLC and MTX. I think
I'll pass.

The grind can't really be alleviated much by paying money and there's
no real DLC. All the content is unlocked with the base game, there's no expansions to buy. In theory you could spend tens of thousands of dollars
to get the in-game currency necessary to buy the best gear in the game
off the market, but even if someone is willing to spend this much money,
the few players that have the best gear aren't willing to sell it.

It's also one of the the most generous MMORPGs out there in terms of
freebies. That includes premiunm stuff that normally costs real money
to get, so there's less presure to spend money on this game than any
other MMORPG I've played.

It is however a very grindy game, so I wouldn't recommend it to everyone. Graphically it looks better than most MMORPGs and there are other things
to do than killing monsters over and over for hours. It's gameplay
is quite different than the typical MMORPG, so if you haven't played a
grindy Korean MMORPG it may be worth checking out for that reason alone.

--
l/ // Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo] [email protected]
-()-/()/ http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca:11068/
db //

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Spalls Hurgenson <[email protected]> wrote:

I mean, Steam disagrees with you. There are three DLC/MTX packs that
would add $70 to the game. They add new gear, additional storage,
funny-money ("pearls") for in-game purchases and numerous cosmetics.
Maybe you can also get it by endless grinding, but it's also available
for sale... and you know that most people are going to get it via the
cash purchase.

Sorry, but none of that is actual downloadable *content*. It doesn't
unlock any activity, character class, place or story in the game.
This is an imporant distiction because many free-to-play games encourage
you to spend money by locking actual content behind a paywall. None of
the stuff in these bundles really alievates the grinding you need to do progress in the game. Also, most of the stuff in the bundles is I've
gotten for free, some many times over.

The three bundles are also overlapping and mutually exclusive, you
can't buy all three. The Traveller Edition is just the game itself.
The Explorer Edition bundles some premium items with the game.
The Conquerer Edition includes everything in the Explorer Edition, plus
some more premium items. The bundled premium items in these packages
appear as two seperate DLC items in Steam because that how Steam works,
but they're just a bundle of "MTX".

I agree with Zaghadka: they're whale-hunting.

I mean sure, the game's business model is built around selling things.
But I've played this game for 6 years now and the amount of money I've
spent on the game is $0. I know from experience it really doesn't put a
lot of pressure on you to actually buy anything. If you're the sort of
person that feels they need to buy every flashy new cosmetic that comes
out, than yah, you're going feel the need to get the credit card out
on a regular basis. I think most people spend some money at the start, probably not fully understanding what they're buying, but I don't think
the average player actually spends that much money on the game.

So yah, they want whales to spend a lot of money, but also they want a lot
of people to play the game. They want the game to look alive, and they
want a large player base to who can spread the word to their friends.
The whales, the virtual fashion addicts, the people who need to flex
their wealth, all subsidize the game for a majority of players like me
that have spent little or nothing on the game.

Compare that to an old-school MMORPG with a $15/mo subscription that went free-to-play, but still requires that you pay $15/mo to access most of
the game's content. Compare that to a free-to-play gatcha game, that
either requires that you be extreamly lucky or spend hundreds of dollars
on pulls to get the characters you want. Destiny 2 is the closest
game I've played in terms of being playable without spending money,
but a lot of the game's content (actual content, not just cometics)
requires spending real money to access.

--
l/ // Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo] [email protected]
-()-/()/ http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca:11068/
db //

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 05/07/2025 18:11, Ross Ridge wrote:

I mean sure, the game's business model is built around selling things.
But I've played this game for 6 years now and the amount of money I've
spent on the game is $0. I know from experience it really doesn't put a
lot of pressure on you to actually buy anything. If you're the sort of person that feels they need to buy every flashy new cosmetic that comes
out, than yah, you're going feel the need to get the credit card out
on a regular basis. I think most people spend some money at the start, probably not fully understanding what they're buying, but I don't think
the average player actually spends that much money on the game.

I've not played Black Desert but it doesn't sound too bad in terms of
MTX and being able to enjoy it as a purely free-to-play game.

My experience of free-to-play comes solely from World of Tanks which
started of quite well as real money was centred around an exchange of
money for player time (grinding). Even then that meant that as a free
player the grind was fine probably up to about tier VIII of tier X in
the tank tech tree. So that can be seen as a soft paywall.

That slowly changed over the years with Wargaming becoming more
aggressive with paid elements so that now I'd find it hard to recommend
as a free-to-play game especially as the advantages of being a paid
player have now seeped to in-battle and not just grinding.

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On Sat, 5 Jul 2025 17:11:28 -0000 (UTC), [email protected]
(Ross Ridge) wrote:

Sorry, but none of that is actual downloadable *content*. It doesn't
unlock any activity, character class, place or story in the game.
This is an imporant distiction because many free-to-play games encourage
you to spend money by locking actual content behind a paywall. None of
the stuff in these bundles really alievates the grinding you need to do >progress in the game. Also, most of the stuff in the bundles is I've
gotten for free, some many times over.

My favorite MMO, which is probably LOTRO at this point, requires you
to either pay for content piecemeal, or pay $15 a month to get access
to it, or grind out the points to get it for free. But that is a
considerable grind.

To be clear, I do not mind supporting games I enjoy playing and I
think LOTRO's monetization method is perfectly acceptable, but it
sounds like from your post, that BDO's monetization is downright
generous by comparison. Thank you for the heads-up.

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Mike S. <[email protected]> wrote:

To be clear, I do not mind supporting games I enjoy playing and I
think LOTRO's monetization method is perfectly acceptable, but it
sounds like from your post, that BDO's monetization is downright
generous by comparison. Thank you for the heads-up.

I don't want to oversell it, it may have a very generous free-to-play
model, but it's still a grindy Korean MMORPG, so you're not going to
get LOTRO but without the paywalls. But for the price of free, I think
it worth trying out. Even if all you do is run a character through the
main quest until you get bored of the game I don't think you find it a
complete waste of time.

I should add though a recent change make the game notably less generous
than it was. It used to be that you could buy additional character slots
(I think you start with 6 or 7) with loyalty points, a semi-premium
currency you earn simply by logging in each day. Now you can only get
them by paying real money and this would have made a big difference to
how I played the game.

--
l/ // Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo] [email protected]
-()-/()/ http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca:11068/
db //

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On Sun, 6 Jul 2025 17:08:48 -0000 (UTC), in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Ross Ridge wrote:

Mike S. <[email protected]> wrote:

To be clear, I do not mind supporting games I enjoy playing and I
think LOTRO's monetization method is perfectly acceptable, but it
sounds like from your post, that BDO's monetization is downright
generous by comparison. Thank you for the heads-up.

I don't want to oversell it, it may have a very generous free-to-play
model, but it's still a grindy Korean MMORPG, so you're not going to
get LOTRO but without the paywalls. But for the price of free, I think
it worth trying out. Even if all you do is run a character through the
main quest until you get bored of the game I don't think you find it a >complete waste of time.

My problem with it was that it was an MMO where you solo, and then you
can go to a boss fight where six other people are fighting the same boss,
in the same place, you can see all of them, and nobody can interact.

Did I miss the point, or is it still like that?

--
Zag

What's the point of growing up
if you can't be childish sometimes? ...Terrance Dicks, BBC

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 06/07/2025 15:25, Mike S. wrote:

To be clear, I do not mind supporting games I enjoy playing and I
think LOTRO's monetization method is perfectly acceptable, but it
sounds like from your post, that BDO's monetization is downright
generous by comparison. Thank you for the heads-up.

I can't comment on LOTRO but my problems in general with MTX in games is
that it has been shown that for a certain section of gamers there is a correlation, not causation, between problem gamblers and the likes of
lootboxes but companies still sell them anyway. Next-up is that the game becomes focused not on what's good for the game experience but instead
how do we get people to open their wallets yet again with the
'psychological warfare' that entails.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On Sun, 6 Jul 2025 17:08:48 -0000 (UTC), [email protected]
(Ross Ridge) wrote:

I don't want to oversell it, it may have a very generous free-to-play
model, but it's still a grindy Korean MMORPG, so you're not going to
get LOTRO but without the paywalls. But for the price of free, I think
it worth trying out. Even if all you do is run a character through the
main quest until you get bored of the game I don't think you find it a >complete waste of time.

I don't think I ever tried an MMO that I thought was a complete waste
of time. Maybe I have just been lucky. Or maybe I am just easy to
please...

Grinds don't bother me. I played EverQuest where all I did was pull
the same mobs over to the group to kill over and over again. I played
Ragnarok with a friend where all we did was grind mobs for a few
months. I have fished literally thousands of fish in WoW.

The next time I am in the mood for an MMO, I think I am going to give
BDO a shot. It is already in my Steam library, so why not.

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On Mon, 7 Jul 2025 08:08:09 +0100, JAB <[email protected]> wrote:

I can't comment on LOTRO but my problems in general with MTX in games is
that it has been shown that for a certain section of gamers there is a >correlation, not causation, between problem gamblers and the likes of >lootboxes but companies still sell them anyway. Next-up is that the game >becomes focused not on what's good for the game experience but instead
how do we get people to open their wallets yet again with the
'psychological warfare' that entails.

Gamers chose this. When Turbine changed LOTRO's monetization to free
to play, their profits tripled within six months. Smaller MMOs (like
LOTRO) will not survive on a $15 a month model anymore.

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On Sun, 6 Jul 2025 13:55:07 -0700, Justisaur <[email protected]>
wrote:

My favorite is still City of Heroes, which is now running off Homecoming
and free, no MTX.

I love City of Heroes. Seriously, it is right behind LOTRO for me. I
have 750 badges on my main character on Homecoming. It is the only MMO
where I actually like grouping up with others.

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Zaghadka <[email protected]> wrote:

My problem with it was that it was an MMO where you solo, and then you
can go to a boss fight where six other people are fighting the same boss,
in the same place, you can see all of them, and nobody can interact.

Did I miss the point, or is it still like that?

Well, the point of fighting a world or field boss is to get the loot
that drops when it dies. Boss loot drops are tiered by damage done,
with the top X players getting better rewards than the next lower tier
of players, so there is a competition element (and a reason not to just
hit the boss once and wait somewhere safe for it to die.) You could
join a party and potentially get healing from other players, but it
doesn't make much of a difference in practice.

However, you are still working together with other players to kill
the boss. You only have a certain amount of time kill world or field
bosses before they despawn. World bosses that despawn still give out
half rewards, but field bosses drop nothing if they don't die.

(If you don't want to see other players when figthing these bosses,
there's a button that will appear during these fights that will make
them disappear, but this is intended to reduce the graphics load on
old computers.)

There's another kind of boss, rift bosses, that can only be fought solo.
They spawn in the same place for everyone, but other players disappear
when fighting them and each player fights their own instance of the boss.
The point of fighting these bosses is also to get the loot they drop.
They exist as an alternative that less you choose when to fight them.
They never despawn, and repear about a week after you defeat them.
World bosses only spawn at certain times on certain days, field bosses
spawn at random times.

Fighting bosses that appear during the main quest works similarly to rift bosses, but you can fight them as a party and they don't respawn after
you defeat them and complete the related quest. The point of killing
them is to just advance the story. (Most of the bosses you can encounter during the main quest are recyled as world, field or rift bosses.)

--
l/ // Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo] [email protected]
-()-/()/ http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca:11068/
db //

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On Mon, 7 Jul 2025 11:11:16 -0700, Justisaur <[email protected]>
wrote:

Sadly no supers (Villains!) MMOs that are anywhere near as fun, and it's >definately aging. Marvel Omega was a distant second, but I miss that
one too. The DC one isn't bad, but it's a bit too corpretized/monitized >feeling. Of course CoH was getting that way at the end, but now that
it's on Homecoming all that's removed.

The only other MMO like City of Heroes I ever played was Champions
Online but I did not think it was anywhere near as good as CoH.

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JAB <[email protected]> wrote:

I can't comment on LOTRO but my problems in general with MTX in games is
that it has been shown that for a certain section of gamers there is a >correlation, not causation, between problem gamblers and the likes of >lootboxes but companies still sell them anyway. Next-up is that the game >becomes focused not on what's good for the game experience but instead
how do we get people to open their wallets yet again with the
'psychological warfare' that entails.

I wouldn't recommend Black Desert to anyone who is a gambling addict.
There are loot boxes that you can buy, but the real problem is that
random chance is a big part of its gear based progression system.
If you're lucky you can get better gear in single "tap". If you're
unluckly it could require so many attempts and materials that it would
have been cheaper to just have bought the upgraded item on the market.
It's fine if you can take the bad luck with the good, but not if you
think it's a game you need to win.

Even if there were no way to spend money on the game, it would still be
a game I think addicts should stay away from.

--
l/ // Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo] [email protected]
-()-/()/ http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca:11068/
db //

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Mike S. <[email protected]> looked up from reading the entrails of the
porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs say:

On Mon, 7 Jul 2025 11:11:16 -0700, Justisaur <[email protected]>
wrote:

Sadly no supers (Villains!) MMOs that are anywhere near as fun, and it's >>definately aging. Marvel Omega was a distant second, but I miss that
one too. The DC one isn't bad, but it's a bit too corpretized/monitized >>feeling. Of course CoH was getting that way at the end, but now that
it's on Homecoming all that's removed.

The only other MMO like City of Heroes I ever played was Champions
Online but I did not think it was anywhere near as good as CoH.

Because it wasn't, even though it was made by the same company -
Cryptic.

Had a more robust costume creator - could do things COH could not, but
the energy builder mechanic pretty much destroyed the superhero feel.

We all remember in the comics/animations/live action+CGI of the Hulk
going "Hulk Tap" "Hulk Tap" "Hulk Tap" "Hulk Smash!".

Oh wait, he goes straight for smash, no energy building necessary.

Xocyll
--
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably,
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Justisaur <[email protected]> looked up from reading the entrails of
the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs say:

On 7/7/2025 6:35 AM, Mike S. wrote:

On Sun, 6 Jul 2025 13:55:07 -0700, Justisaur <[email protected]>
wrote:

My favorite is still City of Heroes, which is now running off Homecoming >>> and free, no MTX.

I love City of Heroes. Seriously, it is right behind LOTRO for me. I
have 750 badges on my main character on Homecoming. It is the only MMO
where I actually like grouping up with others.

My main issue was leveling up with a group was so fast paced I felt like
I was hardly doing anything besides trying to keep up. Homecoming made
it a bit too easy to level up. The villain side is pretty dead too, if
you want to do some of the missions they can be a bit hard solo, and >difficult to find people to do them with you. The end game raids were
pretty awesome, but they started getting repetitive.

It's perfectly playable solo too (though some builds struggle.)

Sadly no supers (Villains!) MMOs that are anywhere near as fun, and it's >definately aging. Marvel Omega was a distant second, but I miss that
one too. The DC one isn't bad, but it's a bit too corpretized/monitized >feeling. Of course CoH was getting that way at the end, but now that
it's on Homecoming all that's removed.

Don't recall it getting monetized at all, just the standard monthly sub
fee. Then NCSoft execs canned it to use the budget to cover a loss and
save their jobs.

COH was always profitable, but since it made up all of 1-2% of their
profits, they could do without to not have to explain to the
stockholders where the $6mil went.

Xocyll
--
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably,
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 07/07/2025 14:39, Mike S. wrote:

On Mon, 7 Jul 2025 08:08:09 +0100, JAB <[email protected]> wrote:

I can't comment on LOTRO but my problems in general with MTX in games is
that it has been shown that for a certain section of gamers there is a
correlation, not causation, between problem gamblers and the likes of
lootboxes but companies still sell them anyway. Next-up is that the game
becomes focused not on what's good for the game experience but instead
how do we get people to open their wallets yet again with the
'psychological warfare' that entails.

Gamers chose this. When Turbine changed LOTRO's monetization to free
to play, their profits tripled within six months. Smaller MMOs (like
LOTRO) will not survive on a $15 a month model anymore.

The problem is there are a section of gamers who don't 'choose' to spend
the amount of money they do in a real sense but instead are susceptible
to being manipulated and companies are more than happy to oblige them.

So take paid lootboxes, personally I don't like them in games at all but
if we must have them is it really that much to ask for users to be able
to set limits on their ability to buy them if they think they need it.
So think there's default limits and if you want to change them down it's
done straight away but if you want to put them up then you have to wait
a day or two before that change is made. Admittedly companies would have
to be forced to do this as we all know that people just love surprise mechanics.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On Wed, 9 Jul 2025 09:04:36 +0100, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action, JAB
wrote:

On 07/07/2025 14:39, Mike S. wrote:

On Mon, 7 Jul 2025 08:08:09 +0100, JAB <[email protected]> wrote:

I can't comment on LOTRO but my problems in general with MTX in games is >>> that it has been shown that for a certain section of gamers there is a
correlation, not causation, between problem gamblers and the likes of
lootboxes but companies still sell them anyway. Next-up is that the game >>> becomes focused not on what's good for the game experience but instead
how do we get people to open their wallets yet again with the
'psychological warfare' that entails.

Gamers chose this. When Turbine changed LOTRO's monetization to free
to play, their profits tripled within six months. Smaller MMOs (like
LOTRO) will not survive on a $15 a month model anymore.

The problem is there are a section of gamers who don't 'choose' to spend
the amount of money they do in a real sense but instead are susceptible
to being manipulated and companies are more than happy to oblige them.

So take paid lootboxes, personally I don't like them in games at all but
if we must have them is it really that much to ask for users to be able
to set limits on their ability to buy them if they think they need it.
So think there's default limits and if you want to change them down it's
done straight away but if you want to put them up then you have to wait
a day or two before that change is made. Admittedly companies would have
to be forced to do this as we all know that people just love surprise >mechanics.

This would definitely be a sensible thing to do for public health
interests.

Shame it goes against the rules of exploitative capitalism. It would
require a lot of effort to get it passed in the US. Maybe not in the EU
though.

I had not even considered that idea.

--
Zag

What's the point of growing up
if you can't be childish sometimes? ...Terrance Dicks, BBC

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