All of that aside, as others have said already the economy is in a very different place now, not to mention making games is also much more expensive now, so even before you include profits (which any company in the world will want, this does not make them evil) there's more work and more people that need to be paid for. To be frank we're probably still paying less per person than the creatives working on the games deserve for their work and this idea that people and companies who make games should just get a pittance for their work disgusts me.
This needs to be emphasized. There is a TON more demand for entertainment, and as a consequence, every person involved in game making can now command much higher salaries. Not to mention the demand for coders has skyrocketed, so most game programmers are actually underpaid. Entry level programmers at Blizzard are making at LEAST 60k USD, and given the technical skill needed for game coding, probably much higher then that.
Also the NOVA DLC is 7.50 per mission pack, which have 3 missions per pack. So 2.50 per mission, which is par for the campaigns.
Except years ago, you didn't expect high quality sound, high quality voice actors, 3d models, writing, and unique art assets.
I did expect sound, voice acting, 3D models, writing, and art assets. Whether they are high quality or not is sort of meaningless: the fact that assets are now of a higher quality than 10 years ago does not necessarily mean that they are harder to create, as methods of creation have also become more accessible and simplified. I'm sure that some people experienced in these professions would in fact only tell you it has only become easier to get stuff done; games have grown in scale to compensate for that, and DLC worth of 1 character or 3 levels is exactly the opposite of scale.
People just recycled a ton. That's why the current commanders are free, they are just recycled campaign stuff so far. But the moment they start making unique models to that commander, along with custom lines (They already revamped and added new dialog/characters to coop), and unique mechanics, then no, 3 people can't do, it just got raised to about 10+ people (VO, tech designer to make code/data, game designer to design the mission and commander, UI people to redo UI to accommodate the commander, artist for new portraits, or buttons, and someone coordinating all that).
Even if you'd need 10 people (which is a gross assumption, but let's roll with it), that's not even remotely close to the crew that worked on WoL/HotS/LotV. Additionally, you'd need 'a model', and 'a couple of lines', and 'a hero design', etc; as opposed to all of that multiple times over the course of an entire game. If you have one person capable of handling the SC2 editor, an artist who can model and animate, an artist for the UI, and someone for sound effects, you can make a commander, hand's down. A few of us here together could do it at Blizzlike level with the tools we've been provided, I'm certain.
Again, expectations have gone up, thus the salaries and costs have gone up, so it has to be paid for now. Before, you accepted that the artwork and assets got recycled all over, and thus it was free. Now, we expect far less recycling, and are outraged when recycling is done. You can certainly still get free content for games, most of that is now on mobile. Also, we expect this content in a timely fashion, and not buggy. Modders tend to fail on both those counts, and free stuff routinely has both of those issues. Good Fast Cheap, choose 2, still holds here.
You're grasping at straws, I think you know this. It's not like everything in older games was just constantly recycled. Some parts of models, animations and sounds were, but plenty of new free content just... really wasn't, at all. See the Dungeon Keeper 1.7 Patch as an example. At best this is a tiny issue, barely a point worth raising in this discussion. You're making it out to be a far bigger deal than it actually is.
Again: I don't think people being paid for their work is a bad thing, but I can promise you Blizzard is making a ludicrous profit of this in regards to the amount of time involved. I can't imagine the Nova missions took a team of 10 people longer than a month at most, meaning that at a wage of 6000 bucks a month (average for the US), they'd need to sell 7500 packs to break even. Assuming literally everyone pre-orders the set at a discount for 15 bucks, they'd need a mere 4000 sales to pay those ten people. Sure, things are a bit more complicated in reality than in this simple equation with big companies, but honestly: Blizzard could probably sell the Nova missions at a price as low as a buck or two per level and still make a profit. I'd like to see you try to explain away an 80-90% overhead once the actual devs have been paid. As a sidenote: the LotV prologue was free, and probably mostly made because a bunch of devs would have otherwise only sat twiddling their thumbs otherwise.
I don't see how these campaigns are any more or less optional than the main expansion content. Buying ANYTHING is optional and unlike the main campaign this is more of a side-story so while it will expand/continue some of the story it isn't quite as cliff-hanger-ish as each pack will be it's own story. I never said it didn't add anything to the story but it's ultimately no different than buying the next book in a series (or perhaps more accurately in this case buying a side-story novella that fleshes out a given character - Nova and Valerian in this case)
True, and this is why I'm not particularly fussed that Blizzard is charging for the maps at all. My earlier argument was mostly semantic. That said, I do think they're overcharging.
I'm sure someone might bring up the post release missions from StarCraft 1, however a major difference here I feel is that those did not have new voice acting or cutscenes, nor new unit artwork, (also worth nothing several of the Enslavers missions even re-used maps from cut missions in StarCraft
I'm glad you brought this up, actually. I won't deny that the Nova missions as well as the additional commanders will likely have some new assets to play with. Now, once you get to try those, consider the following: do you really feel they add much more to the SC2 experience than the post-release SC1 missions did simply because of the new voice acting and assets?
You bring up monetizing mods and yes that would be a great thing to happen and hopefully will. Fan campaigns may even be better (for a certain value of better of course) than the Blizzard made campaigns, however as modders do generally make these things in their spare time it will take much longer as they also have to make a living as opposed to Blizzard made maps which are by their very nature being made by people who do this for a living. Official free content is great but would take a similar amount of time as a fan made map as it would be made when the people involved are not busy working on other content they'll actually sell.
So if that means paying money to get more singleplayer content (which as I say is my main source of enjoyment in StarCraft) and support a company that has given me countless hours of fun I'm happy to do so.
That's your right, of course. But that doesn't mean that if we had had proper campaign support from the start, we would now have at least a couple of Blizzlike campaigns floating around.
I honestly do not see how any of the other content I spoke of is anything less than optional to a player for the reasons I've already stated. They give no advantage against other players in multiplayer and while I'm sure deep analyzing might mean one paid commander might prove better for a given mission due to their specific combination of tech and abilities that's not the same as the type of DLC that is essentially an 'I win' button.
The lines get very blurry here, as definitions when discussing games and what they provide are necessarily vague. That said: I'm not saying the new content is a pay2win level issue. However, to get the complete StarCraft 2 experience, you now need to shell out an additional 15 bucks (likely even more if you're late to the party). No less than that is true.
All of that aside, as others have said already the economy is in a very different place now, not to mention making games is also much more expensive now, so even before you include profits (which any company in the world will want, this does not make them evil) there's more work and more people that need to be paid for. To be frank we're probably still paying less per person than the creatives working on the games deserve for their work and this idea that people and companies who make games should just get a pittance for their work disgusts me.
I answered this in my reply to ArcaneDurandel, but let me put it this way: I've worked as a developer, and intend on doing so again. I know a lot of them because of my current environment (I'm doing a master in Game Studies). They aren't underpaid. Practically any form of an IT job makes good money.
That said, that's not the end of the discussion there; it does seem pretty ludicrous to me that I can pay 15 bucks for 2 hours of enjoyment in a cinema and only shell out 60 bucks for up to 300 hours of enjoyment behind my PC. Because of this, I'm actually a fan of microtransactions, provides they are fair. MOBA's adopted this system pretty damn well. Instead of making me pay 200+ bucks for all League of Legends heroes, I can choose to pay 30 bucks to get the 6-7 heroes I actually like playing. That, is consumer choice.
Again: I don't think people being paid for their work is a bad thing, but I can promise you Blizzard is making a ludicrous profit of this in regards to the amount of time involved. I can't imagine the Nova missions took a team of 10 people longer than a month at most, meaning that at a wage of 6000 bucks a month (average for the US), they'd need to sell 7500 packs to break even. Assuming literally everyone pre-orders the set at a discount for 15 bucks, they'd need a mere 4000 sales to pay those ten people. Sure, things are a bit more complicated in reality than in this simple equation with big companies, but honestly: Blizzard could probably sell the Nova missions at a price as low as a buck or two per level and still make a profit. I'd like to see you try to explain away an 80-90% overhead once the actual devs have been paid. As a sidenote: the LotV prologue was free, and probably mostly made because a bunch of devs would have otherwise only sat twiddling their thumbs otherwise.
I will have to disagree with this. My assumption of 10 people was also assuming absolutely nothing had to be added to any feature to support the commander, ie game engine, UI engine, or any other other component. So that 80-90% includes all the engineers, in addition to the developers. Then you have the tools engineers, and whoever is working on the editor itself. Then you have to pay true overhead (finance, HR, marketing, etc.). Someone had to make the art that is on the desktop app. Oh, that's another team of engineers that gets added to the cost, B.net has to be involved. These are all things that modders DO NOT have to care about in the slightest, but a company putting something out does, and it reflects in the cost. And QA, the one thing modders routinely skip on, but costs a bunch as well.
All said and done, for Blizzard to ship Nova, or anything really, will involve directly upwards 20 people. All of which are making at least the average you quoted, and many of them making far more (the engineers are probably making 80-90k).
And the QA cycle alone will take a month. They are working on it now, but there is no way they could have it ready to ship in under 2 months.
Assuming 30 people all with a salary of 8000 bucks a month, we're still talking only 16.000 sales if everybody pre-orders (and thus gets a discount). LotV as a whole sold 1 million copies within a day, 16.000 isn't even 2% of that. Even if we're assuming 100 people all at 8000 bucks a month for 2 months, we're still only barely looking at 100.000 sales, which really isn't anywhere near an incredible number for a company of this magnitude. And that's with me overestimating practically everything in Blizzard's favour.
Again: I have no insight in Blizzard's finances, so it's hard to paint an anywhere near complete picture. Regardless, I can't see how they aren't making at least 50% profit on something like the Nova missions, maybe even going up to 80%. If you genuinely think 8 bucks for 3 missions worth of content is a fair price where the majority of the money goes to the people who make that possible, I'm done arguing.
Edit: Something I just thought of... LotV, with 22 missions for 40 bucks, is going at about 50 cents per mission. The Nova packs, at 8 dollar per 3 missions, are going at 2.6 bucks per misson. The two are very hard to compare, but ponder that for a second. Are the cutscenes, models, storyline outside of the actual gameplay and multiplayer updates worth 80% of the budget?
I'm not even sure cost accounting would be the proper way to value such a product. A study based on what the market would be willing to bear would probably fit the bill better. Also your cost accounting only factors in a singular variable cost.
.. LotV, with 22 missions for 40 bucks, is going at about 50 cents per mission. The Nova packs, at 8 dollar per 3 missions, are going at 2.6 bucks per misson.
I'm sorry I had to reply to this, but you are dividing it the wrong way, its 40/22 = 1.81 dollars per mission. Compared to the Nova full packs, which is 15 bucks for 9 misison, which is $1.66 per mission, cheaper than LoTV (than again, had a multiplayer mode, 3 co-op commanders). Of course, bigger pack purchase should provide more value obviously. I'm sure Blizz had done the market research on this.
For my opinion, I'm perfectly fine with they charging for heroes, as long as the maps are free (who would be stupid enough to charge for maps ? Oh right, the marketplace arcade, their next plan). Heroes hold sentimental reasons for players who loved them in the campaign. Karax is kinda terrible at first, but as I leveled him, he grows on me as I understood his playstyle better. He's no broken omnislash Vorazun, but he's perfectly capable of beating Brutal, and that's fine for me or anyone who loved his playstyle. We played the mode for fun, not to faceroll Brutal 250 times in a row and call it quit.
For future heroes, they should do a better job marketing them, showing the player what their playstyle are designed to be. Ability description and a 10s videos can't do that.
I was just hoping their next Terran commander will be free for WoL owner and similarly for HotS but I guess it probably won't happen. LoTV edition is the ultimate version they wanted to push.
who would be stupid enough to charge for maps ? Oh right, the marketplace arcade, their next plan
I think after nearly 6 years we can safely say that the marketplace isn't really worth worrying about.
On topic, I'd pay for commanders if the mode were expanded a bit. As it stands you get about 3-4 hours of entertainment and then you hit level 15 before just nothing. You get the final perk and simultaneously lose all reason to continue playing. I'd even take a level cap of 20 with nothing but an achievement for grinding those last levels out, just to give me a reason to make use of those amazing final level perks without it seeming like a waste of time.
i'll pay only for new content. i.e. new art & sound. I was about buying the nova missions but they didn't release any details about how much of new content they're going to add (saw only new nova character model). So if they're going to recycle what they've already got and just making new terrain/triggers for the story, fuck that maaan... XD
@abvdzh: Go There will be new unit skins at least, but I couldn't find the link. They shown images of a new stealth ship for Nova as well as a covert ops marine.
There was also a concept of a Black Ops Siege Tank in the same pic as the Marine and at the panel they talked about Nova's forces looking and playing different. I've attached a screenshot I took of the Stream after finding nowhere had uploaded a pic of this. Though not shown in the screenshot I think they also talked about possibly having the Black Ops Siege Tank hover (though hadn't decided at that point)
That said from the screenshots on the Nova page on Battle.net it looks like there's also new art assets in the form of interface as a new briefing screen is shown. It's also possible we will get new storymode models as well depending on how the in game cinematics are rendered.
Definitely agree, I'm happy to pay a few dollars for a commander but if they're priced anything like WoW store mounts I'm not even going to consider it.
Though I'm not sure if they are going to create art assets for Co-Op specifically, I think because they're making them for a campaign already, they will use them in Co-Op, but that was not the reason they were created. If they did end up creating art assets for Co-Op I'd likely buy it to support moar stuffz for the Galaxy Editor.
@FatCatTrap: Go Karax's Star Forge was created for him. So I'd say they are willing to create some assets for each hero, and if we're going to pay for them at least give us new assets.
Fair enough, but that would basically mean the death of SC2 financially. There a not so minor number of people of the world who balk at the high price of SC2. Even a game as low as 30 USD is something they will pass on, since 30 USD is a ton of money in many parts of the world.
Consider the word: Micro transaction. That implies there is a transaction, and the new form is a smaller version of it. The theory is that sticker shock is real, and thus you have to adjust and present choices to avoid it. Humans fundamentally prefer choice.
Before, you had exactly one choice: Take it or leave it. You paid 60 USD for WoL, which gave you the campaign, the arcade, the custom games, and the ladders. If you wanted only one of those, you still had to pay for all of them. Also, it sets a price cliff, you either can afford all of the game, or none of it.
Now, you have a choice:
1) Pay nothing. You get the arcade, the editor, custom games, and team ladder (if playing with someone who has purchased), and coop (Not all commanders)
2) Pay for one expansion (20-60USD) You get the expansions campaign and that level of ladder, and the right to publish to the arcade/custom maps.
3) Pay for Nova DLC (15 -25 USD). This is a new option option, since it gives you the content of a mini campaign, but not the publishing rights, or ladder.
4) Pay for coop commanders (Unknown at this time). New option, novelty for those who want to play a specific style or have lore attachments to that commander (Alarak has been requested since day one).
5) Pay for cosmetics, this is novelty only (Unknown at this time).
So you've gone from one option to many, and payment is very very flexible, not a brick wall of Take It or Leave It.
I'll also note, that when people are presented with a single option, they tend to make their own options (Not buy, pirate, account share, etc.). Gabe Newell once said that piracy is not an economic problem, it is a service problem. I would argue it is a problem of choice. By giving people a choice, people will be a lot more accepting of things like DLC and so on.
Also, I will again make the old counterargument: SC2 is not one game, it was not broken up into 3 expensive chunks, you got equivalent content, possibly more, then SC1. Sorry that Blizzard did something very long term.
I would have liked the choice to not pay for ladder multiplayer. I bet it would've saved me at least $10 haha. If the game were $10 cheaper with ladder as a $10 transaction though, people like Strato would complain.
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This needs to be emphasized. There is a TON more demand for entertainment, and as a consequence, every person involved in game making can now command much higher salaries. Not to mention the demand for coders has skyrocketed, so most game programmers are actually underpaid. Entry level programmers at Blizzard are making at LEAST 60k USD, and given the technical skill needed for game coding, probably much higher then that.
Also the NOVA DLC is 7.50 per mission pack, which have 3 missions per pack. So 2.50 per mission, which is par for the campaigns.
I did expect sound, voice acting, 3D models, writing, and art assets. Whether they are high quality or not is sort of meaningless: the fact that assets are now of a higher quality than 10 years ago does not necessarily mean that they are harder to create, as methods of creation have also become more accessible and simplified. I'm sure that some people experienced in these professions would in fact only tell you it has only become easier to get stuff done; games have grown in scale to compensate for that, and DLC worth of 1 character or 3 levels is exactly the opposite of scale.
Even if you'd need 10 people (which is a gross assumption, but let's roll with it), that's not even remotely close to the crew that worked on WoL/HotS/LotV. Additionally, you'd need 'a model', and 'a couple of lines', and 'a hero design', etc; as opposed to all of that multiple times over the course of an entire game. If you have one person capable of handling the SC2 editor, an artist who can model and animate, an artist for the UI, and someone for sound effects, you can make a commander, hand's down. A few of us here together could do it at Blizzlike level with the tools we've been provided, I'm certain.
You're grasping at straws, I think you know this. It's not like everything in older games was just constantly recycled. Some parts of models, animations and sounds were, but plenty of new free content just... really wasn't, at all. See the Dungeon Keeper 1.7 Patch as an example. At best this is a tiny issue, barely a point worth raising in this discussion. You're making it out to be a far bigger deal than it actually is.
Again: I don't think people being paid for their work is a bad thing, but I can promise you Blizzard is making a ludicrous profit of this in regards to the amount of time involved. I can't imagine the Nova missions took a team of 10 people longer than a month at most, meaning that at a wage of 6000 bucks a month (average for the US), they'd need to sell 7500 packs to break even. Assuming literally everyone pre-orders the set at a discount for 15 bucks, they'd need a mere 4000 sales to pay those ten people. Sure, things are a bit more complicated in reality than in this simple equation with big companies, but honestly: Blizzard could probably sell the Nova missions at a price as low as a buck or two per level and still make a profit. I'd like to see you try to explain away an 80-90% overhead once the actual devs have been paid. As a sidenote: the LotV prologue was free, and probably mostly made because a bunch of devs would have otherwise only sat twiddling their thumbs otherwise.
True, and this is why I'm not particularly fussed that Blizzard is charging for the maps at all. My earlier argument was mostly semantic. That said, I do think they're overcharging.
I'm glad you brought this up, actually. I won't deny that the Nova missions as well as the additional commanders will likely have some new assets to play with. Now, once you get to try those, consider the following: do you really feel they add much more to the SC2 experience than the post-release SC1 missions did simply because of the new voice acting and assets?
That's your right, of course. But that doesn't mean that if we had had proper campaign support from the start, we would now have at least a couple of Blizzlike campaigns floating around.
The lines get very blurry here, as definitions when discussing games and what they provide are necessarily vague. That said: I'm not saying the new content is a pay2win level issue. However, to get the complete StarCraft 2 experience, you now need to shell out an additional 15 bucks (likely even more if you're late to the party). No less than that is true.
I answered this in my reply to ArcaneDurandel, but let me put it this way: I've worked as a developer, and intend on doing so again. I know a lot of them because of my current environment (I'm doing a master in Game Studies). They aren't underpaid. Practically any form of an IT job makes good money.
That said, that's not the end of the discussion there; it does seem pretty ludicrous to me that I can pay 15 bucks for 2 hours of enjoyment in a cinema and only shell out 60 bucks for up to 300 hours of enjoyment behind my PC. Because of this, I'm actually a fan of microtransactions, provides they are fair. MOBA's adopted this system pretty damn well. Instead of making me pay 200+ bucks for all League of Legends heroes, I can choose to pay 30 bucks to get the 6-7 heroes I actually like playing. That, is consumer choice.
I will have to disagree with this. My assumption of 10 people was also assuming absolutely nothing had to be added to any feature to support the commander, ie game engine, UI engine, or any other other component. So that 80-90% includes all the engineers, in addition to the developers. Then you have the tools engineers, and whoever is working on the editor itself. Then you have to pay true overhead (finance, HR, marketing, etc.). Someone had to make the art that is on the desktop app. Oh, that's another team of engineers that gets added to the cost, B.net has to be involved. These are all things that modders DO NOT have to care about in the slightest, but a company putting something out does, and it reflects in the cost. And QA, the one thing modders routinely skip on, but costs a bunch as well.
All said and done, for Blizzard to ship Nova, or anything really, will involve directly upwards 20 people. All of which are making at least the average you quoted, and many of them making far more (the engineers are probably making 80-90k).
And the QA cycle alone will take a month. They are working on it now, but there is no way they could have it ready to ship in under 2 months.
@ArcaneDurandel: Go
Assuming 30 people all with a salary of 8000 bucks a month, we're still talking only 16.000 sales if everybody pre-orders (and thus gets a discount). LotV as a whole sold 1 million copies within a day, 16.000 isn't even 2% of that. Even if we're assuming 100 people all at 8000 bucks a month for 2 months, we're still only barely looking at 100.000 sales, which really isn't anywhere near an incredible number for a company of this magnitude. And that's with me overestimating practically everything in Blizzard's favour.
Again: I have no insight in Blizzard's finances, so it's hard to paint an anywhere near complete picture. Regardless, I can't see how they aren't making at least 50% profit on something like the Nova missions, maybe even going up to 80%. If you genuinely think 8 bucks for 3 missions worth of content is a fair price where the majority of the money goes to the people who make that possible, I'm done arguing.
Edit: Something I just thought of... LotV, with 22 missions for 40 bucks, is going at about 50 cents per mission. The Nova packs, at 8 dollar per 3 missions, are going at 2.6 bucks per misson. The two are very hard to compare, but ponder that for a second. Are the cutscenes, models, storyline outside of the actual gameplay and multiplayer updates worth 80% of the budget?
I'm not even sure cost accounting would be the proper way to value such a product. A study based on what the market would be willing to bear would probably fit the bill better. Also your cost accounting only factors in a singular variable cost.
I'm sorry I had to reply to this, but you are dividing it the wrong way, its 40/22 = 1.81 dollars per mission. Compared to the Nova full packs, which is 15 bucks for 9 misison, which is $1.66 per mission, cheaper than LoTV (than again, had a multiplayer mode, 3 co-op commanders). Of course, bigger pack purchase should provide more value obviously. I'm sure Blizz had done the market research on this.
For my opinion, I'm perfectly fine with they charging for heroes, as long as the maps are free (who would be stupid enough to charge for maps ? Oh right, the marketplace arcade, their next plan). Heroes hold sentimental reasons for players who loved them in the campaign. Karax is kinda terrible at first, but as I leveled him, he grows on me as I understood his playstyle better. He's no broken omnislash Vorazun, but he's perfectly capable of beating Brutal, and that's fine for me or anyone who loved his playstyle. We played the mode for fun, not to faceroll Brutal 250 times in a row and call it quit.
For future heroes, they should do a better job marketing them, showing the player what their playstyle are designed to be. Ability description and a 10s videos can't do that.
I was just hoping their next Terran commander will be free for WoL owner and similarly for HotS but I guess it probably won't happen. LoTV edition is the ultimate version they wanted to push.
Can I have some money now? It will cost more when It's finished.
I think after nearly 6 years we can safely say that the marketplace isn't really worth worrying about.
On topic, I'd pay for commanders if the mode were expanded a bit. As it stands you get about 3-4 hours of entertainment and then you hit level 15 before just nothing. You get the final perk and simultaneously lose all reason to continue playing. I'd even take a level cap of 20 with nothing but an achievement for grinding those last levels out, just to give me a reason to make use of those amazing final level perks without it seeming like a waste of time.
i'll pay only for new content. i.e. new art & sound. I was about buying the nova missions but they didn't release any details about how much of new content they're going to add (saw only new nova character model). So if they're going to recycle what they've already got and just making new terrain/triggers for the story, fuck that maaan... XD
@abvdzh: Go There will be new unit skins at least, but I couldn't find the link. They shown images of a new stealth ship for Nova as well as a covert ops marine.
@SoulFilcher: Go
There was also a concept of a Black Ops Siege Tank in the same pic as the Marine and at the panel they talked about Nova's forces looking and playing different. I've attached a screenshot I took of the Stream after finding nowhere had uploaded a pic of this. Though not shown in the screenshot I think they also talked about possibly having the Black Ops Siege Tank hover (though hadn't decided at that point)
That said from the screenshots on the Nova page on Battle.net it looks like there's also new art assets in the form of interface as a new briefing screen is shown. It's also possible we will get new storymode models as well depending on how the in game cinematics are rendered.
They are almost certainly adding new assets. They have already gone back and added new unique dialog lines to the coop missions.
Definitely agree, I'm happy to pay a few dollars for a commander but if they're priced anything like WoW store mounts I'm not even going to consider it.
Though I'm not sure if they are going to create art assets for Co-Op specifically, I think because they're making them for a campaign already, they will use them in Co-Op, but that was not the reason they were created. If they did end up creating art assets for Co-Op I'd likely buy it to support moar stuffz for the Galaxy Editor.
@FatCatTrap: Go Karax's Star Forge was created for him. So I'd say they are willing to create some assets for each hero, and if we're going to pay for them at least give us new assets.
@SoulFilcher: Go
Didn't even notice that until now haha, heres to hoping they continue adding in a couple here and there.
I don't support micro-transactions for a game you have to buy already, if this game was fully F2P from the get go, I could understand.
but this was a full priced game separated into 3 expensive chunks.
And I won't be buying anything else for this game. I find it pretty scummy to continue the story in tiny micro-transaction chunks :/
Never been a fan of this business model, never will.
@stratostygo: Go
Fair enough, but that would basically mean the death of SC2 financially. There a not so minor number of people of the world who balk at the high price of SC2. Even a game as low as 30 USD is something they will pass on, since 30 USD is a ton of money in many parts of the world.
Consider the word: Micro transaction. That implies there is a transaction, and the new form is a smaller version of it. The theory is that sticker shock is real, and thus you have to adjust and present choices to avoid it. Humans fundamentally prefer choice.
Before, you had exactly one choice: Take it or leave it. You paid 60 USD for WoL, which gave you the campaign, the arcade, the custom games, and the ladders. If you wanted only one of those, you still had to pay for all of them. Also, it sets a price cliff, you either can afford all of the game, or none of it.
Now, you have a choice:
1) Pay nothing. You get the arcade, the editor, custom games, and team ladder (if playing with someone who has purchased), and coop (Not all commanders)
2) Pay for one expansion (20-60USD) You get the expansions campaign and that level of ladder, and the right to publish to the arcade/custom maps.
3) Pay for Nova DLC (15 -25 USD). This is a new option option, since it gives you the content of a mini campaign, but not the publishing rights, or ladder.
4) Pay for coop commanders (Unknown at this time). New option, novelty for those who want to play a specific style or have lore attachments to that commander (Alarak has been requested since day one).
5) Pay for cosmetics, this is novelty only (Unknown at this time).
So you've gone from one option to many, and payment is very very flexible, not a brick wall of Take It or Leave It.
I'll also note, that when people are presented with a single option, they tend to make their own options (Not buy, pirate, account share, etc.). Gabe Newell once said that piracy is not an economic problem, it is a service problem. I would argue it is a problem of choice. By giving people a choice, people will be a lot more accepting of things like DLC and so on.
Also, I will again make the old counterargument: SC2 is not one game, it was not broken up into 3 expensive chunks, you got equivalent content, possibly more, then SC1. Sorry that Blizzard did something very long term.
@ArcaneDurandel: Go
I would have liked the choice to not pay for ladder multiplayer. I bet it would've saved me at least $10 haha. If the game were $10 cheaper with ladder as a $10 transaction though, people like Strato would complain.