Helldivers 2 and Marvel Rivals convinced me: Battle passes should never expire
Helldivers 2 and Marvel Rivals convinced me: Battle passes should never expire
Or, hear me out, maybe games should just sell you a good product at a fair price rather than trying to manipulate you into playing it longer than you enjoy it for.
Only timed battle passes manipulate you into playing it more than you enjoy it for. The ones in Helldivers 2 never expire so if you were to get bored of the game you can just stop playing. Then come back to the game a year later and continue on where you left off.
They have rewards tied to grinding out the game's content as opposed to just buying the rewards directly to play with in the game's content, right? I'd say that's the difference. In Magicka, I bought costumes that had different gameplay mechanics tied to them, and I could use them right away. But for business reasons, live service games create incentives to keep you playing longer than you would otherwise.
That's the whole point of gamification mechanics, there's a fine line between grind and good gameplay which needs to be masterfully balanced
They don't need to gamify something that's already a fun game.
lol. I hate when companies try to gamify a game.
For me grind is when the gameplay loop is motivated by reward not exploration and plays out the same every time.
Good gameplay can come from a feeling of freshness because there are lots of possibilities, because rng or because player options (say, slay the spire), or from lots of genuinely novel content (say, elden ring).
It doesn't feel like a balancing act at all. I just want more of the latter and less of the former, but maybe some people really do play for repetition?
Deep Rock Galactic has, in my personal experience, the best battle pass system of them all. Every season's pass is free, because the game costs €40 upfront, they never expire and you can switch to any other season that has ever been while maintaining progress on your current one. All of the paid cosmetics are also Steam DLC that you can buy whenever, forever. Firstly, this is great because the game never tries to pressure you to play the game by slapping a timer on any and all rewards. Secondly, by allowing players to play every single battle pass, the game now contains multiple times the content that it could ever have in one season. This way, the players can enjoy ever more content while the developers don't need to create more of it at a fast pace. I just finished season 5: Drilling Deeper and instead of having to wait however long it takes for the developers to add more progression to the game, I just turn the knob to season 2!
Halo Infinite: Post-season 5, battle passes are now free during their introductory season, but cost $5 to unlock afterward
Marvel Rivals: Battle passes will not expire if you bought the $10 Luxury pass during the season
These are not FOMO-less. Marvel Rivals sounds like the worst of the three in that regard. The 'old' method incentivized you to skip buying a battle pass if you weren't going to finish it (because you'd lose rewards); MR's system gives you a FOMO CTA to make that purchase to stop you from losing rewards.
Compare this to, say, Dead By Daylight, where there's "seasons" with unlockable rewards, you can get them for free, and you can keep unlocking them after the season ends.
Compare this to, say, Dead By Daylight, where there’s “seasons” with unlockable rewards, you can get them for free, and you can keep unlocking them after the season ends.
Similarly Helldivers 2 battle passes cost in-game earnable currency to unlock and never expire, but if people want to pay cash to unlock them the option is there.
I don't think I've ever purchased a battle pass and I don't plan to. I think if a game I was interested in offered one, I'd consider just skipping it.
If no one bought the things they'd stop making them, but that is an impossible idea.
Same. As soon as I saw what a battle pass was I decided they were stupid. I'm not paying for temporary things
The only one I've bought is the one in Marvel Rivals but that's cause it was only $5 for a game I've already put like 50-60 hours in. Plus with the way it's setup if I want to get another one in the future if it's the same price it'll only be like $2 with the included currency you get from buying it. I generally agree I would rather just not have battle passes at all but I think Concord showed that paid games in this kind of genre don't really work anymore. Sure Concord had other problems but I'm sure it would have been better off if it was free to play with micro transactions as a lot more people would have given it a shot if there was no barrier to entry.
Halo Infinite did it before either tbf
Nothing inside a video game should cost real money.
No digital product should ever disappear forever.
Interesting how bad online gaming got, that articles like this one exist. Content of a game you bought not vanishing after a few months is revolutionary, just wow.