Action-RPG colossus Elden Ring is reportedly getting a free-to-play mobile adaptation with in-app purchases, which takes inspiration from miHoYo’s Genshin Impact. It’s being published by Tencent, who apparently acquired the licensing rights to Elden Ring back in 2022 and put a few dozen people to work on a prototype, even as the company acquired a 16% stake in Elden Ring developer From Software.
IMTX can be fair if these don’t abuse the players time, and offer fun content. You’re paying the game for free, mind you.
Tencent already had invested in From Software. They want to see returns, and this is how.
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No, they aren’t. DLC is an expansion upon the content. The best case scenario for mtx that do not affect gameplay are cosmetic only.
If a game in any way has anything else than cosmetic mtx, the game is worse.
“But you don’t have to buy it!” Is how I often see them defended, the subtext being that, if I don’t buy them it doesn’t affect my experience.
Here is the secret, games with mtx are designed to have problems and they sell you the solution. They are designed WORSE intentionally, so you will spend money to bypass the inconveniences. Often your time.
A perfect example is something like long standing games selling boosts to max level. They’re aware the old content is dead, and they’re aware the only people playing it are the people who don’t want to spend money. Why don’t they fix that?
The answer is they did, they decided that inconvenience was acceptable in their game in order to convince the player to spend money.
MTX is not content, often it’s used to bypass content or save time. DLC is content. DLC often expands upon the experience of the game. MTX worsens the experience of the game just buy existing. Dlc doesn’t change your experience if you don’t purchase or use it. MTX changes the game at a base level no matter if you spend money or not.
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Why did you assume they are young?
Servers cost money, adding content costs money, if you want something for free, who’s paying these costs? Because if it’s the business, they won’t be in business very long if they just spend money and have nothing coming back in.
I say this as a person in their 30s, age is irrelevant here.
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Addressing only your first paragraph, the comparison is a bit silly. FF7 didn’t have any online features. Elden Ring does.
Your rant or point is hard to take seriously when it eschews any kind of nuance and comes off as “old man yells at cloud”.
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Lol, I am very critical of my hobbies, especially the companies that produce my hobbies. That’s not why your comment is hard to take seriously.
Also, who is “you kids”? I’m in my thirties and don’t buy mtx.
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Listen if you want to piss away money on transient shit you are welcome to go and do it, but the person missing the nuances here is you. The industry moving towards these models is negatively affecting gaming as a whole and it’ll only get worse, even if you’re too blinded by tacky skins to notice the reason why.
My guy, I wasn’t even trying to make a defense of micro transactions, I was pointing out the really weird comparison of a PS1 game from 1997 with no baked in online features, and a modern game with baked in online features.
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This is a lie not even loosely connected to reality.
Elden Ring doesn’t use a server, it’s peer to peer.
Player connections are peer to peer, but a server is absolutely still involved in match making and serving up player messages.
Matchmaking is also peer to peer as far as anyone knows but I can’t find any info on how messages are handled. It’s entirely possible those also work on their peer to peer system but even if not a server that serves short text snippets with coordinates to all these players could be run on 20 year old hardware so not even costly enough to register.
They have literally taken down servers before for maintenance and the like.
The key difference being you paid for the game…. This is a free game… totally different scenarios. So yes I will downvote you for completely missing the point of the discussion and ranting on about something totally irrelevant.
How does a company keep paying for servers and content when they don’t charge for the game or anything else….? With proper MTXs….
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It’s another unrelated market, mobile games can’t charge $80 for a game. People don’t even like paying $10. That style of developing is barely affordable nowadays as well for pc/console anyways, but that’s another argument and not relevant to this one.
You are comparing apples to oranges. And there’s nothing predatory when it’s done correctly, but there’s also some people who just see the devil in everything, lien you apparently.
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Saying you were 13/14 when horse armor came out doesn’t help your case arguing against their comment. It just means you were prime gaming age when dlc, map packs, and smaller content were replacing larger expansions. The acceptance of those (which based on your demographic you probably did accept) made it easier to transition to more and more egregious micro transactions.
There used to be (maybe still are) complete games released on mobile. They usually cost $6.99 and didn’t need more. If they want Elden Ring on mobile without tarnishing its reputation, they could sell a complete experience for $10 or $15 since it’s been a decade since those $6.99 prices. That’s what Elden Ring was and it was widely praised. That’s what the rest of their games have done and that has turned out well for them.
There may be servers for the multiplayer, but based on the fact none of the other From Soft games charged for it the cost must be minimal.
Who said they want shit for free?
Buying the apps isn’t possible because this malicious extortionate bullshit makes them more money.
Take a look at the free to play market on mobile and you’ll see why people don’t like the news.
I feel like it’s just wrong to call these games ‘free’. They are ‘partially free’ with the incentive to extract as much money from you as possible in order to get the ‘good stuff’ or simply to avoid endless hours of unfun grinding. It’s just inferior in every way compared to games you pay for once and that’s it, because they don’t need to drip feed you ‘fun’.
Exceptions apply to competitive games that need a changing meta and content updates. New content for non-competitve ‘free’ games mostly amounts to new stuff you can buy to surpass new arbitrary walls built in front of you.
Free (as in beer) is never free
IMTX and not wasting players time are nearly mutually-exclusive. These games are designed with the MTX in mind at every single step of the process, and are made with the sole intent of maximizing MTX sales. Them wasting your time is not a mistake, but an intentional (and meticulously-researched and -designed) feature.
There are exceptions, yes, of course, but they are few and far between.