If I could buy everything I wanted to, because Bright Dust fell like rain (or even more to your liking, everything was free), I wouldn't care about ANY of it. They could make thousands of ornaments... and I'd ignore them all. Total waste of their dev time, total waste of an opportunity to engage me.

FRICTION MAKES ME CARE. I'm totally good with friction frustrating you. What I've been trying to make you see, for years now, is that NOT ALL OF US THINK LIKE YOU.

There are other ways of making you care. Like say, tying it to an accomplishment of skill or knowledge building. Frictions have to be the worst possible way to make you care about things.

There are other ways of almost everything under the sun. Doesn't make the one they picked bad (or even worse than whatever vague thing you just suggested).

Do you go to shitty movie theaters because the friction will make you care more?

I don't even know what this means.

Do you hire a slimy auto mechanic so that you have to check and fight his every attempt to scam you?

Nope.

I'll bet you'd really care a ton about your car then after going through that!

You'd lose that bet. Also, way to completely miss the point.

You might as well take a job that pays you minimum wage, because when a game costs a day's wage you'll sure care about it more!

Way to go out on a 50-foot limb for that strawman!

But at the end of the day, if you wouldn't care about it if it's free, then it just means the thing has no intrinsic value.

Also wrong.

You're just full of wrong today.

If I could buy everything I wanted to, because Bright Dust fell like rain (or even more to your liking, everything was free), I wouldn't care about ANY of it. They could make thousands of ornaments... and I'd ignore them all. Total waste of their dev time, total waste of an opportunity to engage me.

FRICTION MAKES ME CARE. I'm totally good with friction frustrating you. What I've been trying to make you see, for years now, is that NOT ALL OF US THINK LIKE YOU.

There are other ways of making you care. Like say, tying it to an accomplishment of skill or knowledge building. Frictions have to be the worst possible way to make you care about things.

Do you go to shitty movie theaters because the friction will make you care more? Do you hire a slimy auto mechanic so that you have to check and fight his every attempt to scam you? I'll bet you'd really care a ton about your car then after going through that! You might as well take a job that pays you minimum wage, because when a game costs a day's wage you'll sure care about it more!

But at the end of the day, if you wouldn't care about it if it's free, then it just means the thing has no intrinsic value.

Also, I don't think I've ever seen a non-mobile game ever have an ability to skip any part of a game for money.

If you have ever bought something from Eververse with silver, you've paid to skip the part of the game where you earn bright dust to buy the thing.

This is wrong. There are plenty of Eververse items that have not, and never will be, sold for bright dust.

And there aren’t plenty that you can get with either bright dust OR silver?

Yep. Never said there wasn't. Trying to get you to pay attention to your words.

"If you have ever bought" is wrong.

"Sometimes, when you buy" would have been accurate. (Correction: MIGHT have been accurate. There are still other ways to interpret that activity. For example, there is actually a limit on the amount of Bright Dust you can realistically earn in a given time period. (Some of the bounties that provide it are repeatable... but there are really only so many hours in a day.) You might say "I really want both that ship and that ghost, but I don't have the Bright Dust for both. I'll pay for the Ghost, and I'll buy the ship with real money when it comes around again." This is NOT the same thing as "paying to skip the part of the game where you earn bright dust to buy the thing".)

Lol. A cap like that on bright dust with expiring items is a textbook example of a friction.

But not a bad one.

If I could buy everything I wanted to, because Bright Dust fell like rain (or even more to your liking, everything was free), I wouldn't care about ANY of it. They could make thousands of ornaments... and I'd ignore them all. Total waste of their dev time, total waste of an opportunity to engage me.

FRICTION MAKES ME CARE. I'm totally good with friction frustrating you. What I've been trying to make you see, for years now, is that NOT ALL OF US THINK LIKE YOU.

Also, I don't think I've ever seen a non-mobile game ever have an ability to skip any part of a game for money.

If you have ever bought something from Eververse with silver, you've paid to skip the part of the game where you earn bright dust to buy the thing.

This is wrong. There are plenty of Eververse items that have not, and never will be, sold for bright dust.

And there aren’t plenty that you can get with either bright dust OR silver?

Yep. Never said there wasn't. Trying to get you to pay attention to your words.

"If you have ever bought" is wrong.

"Sometimes, when you buy" would have been accurate. (Correction: MIGHT have been accurate. There are still other ways to interpret that activity. For example, there is actually a limit on the amount of Bright Dust you can realistically earn in a given time period. (Some of the bounties that provide it are repeatable... but there are really only so many hours in a day.) You might say "I really want both that ship and that ghost, but I don't have the Bright Dust for both. I'll pay for the Ghost, and I'll buy the ship with real money when it comes around again." This is NOT the same thing as "paying to skip the part of the game where you earn bright dust to buy the thing".)

Lol. A cap like that on bright dust with expiring items is a textbook example of a friction.

Also, I don't think I've ever seen a non-mobile game ever have an ability to skip any part of a game for money.

If you have ever bought something from Eververse with silver, you've paid to skip the part of the game where you earn bright dust to buy the thing.

This is wrong. There are plenty of Eververse items that have not, and never will be, sold for bright dust.

And there aren’t plenty that you can get with either bright dust OR silver?

Yep. Never said there wasn't. Trying to get you to pay attention to your words.

"If you have ever bought" is wrong.

"Sometimes, when you buy" would have been accurate. (Correction: MIGHT have been accurate. There are still other ways to interpret that activity. For example, there is actually a limit on the amount of Bright Dust you can realistically earn in a given time period. (Some of the bounties that provide it are repeatable... but there are really only so many hours in a day.) You might say "I really want both that ship and that ghost, but I don't have the Bright Dust for both. I'll pay for the Ghost, and I'll buy the ship with real money when it comes around again." This is NOT the same thing as "paying to skip the part of the game where you earn bright dust to buy the thing".)

Have they? That info is nowhere in the in game store that I’ve seen.

No, you're right, it's not. They do post a list, though (I'm not even sure where to find it, lol) of all the stuff that is available on Eververse that WILL be available for Bright Dust at some point during the season.

Also, I don't think I've ever seen a non-mobile game ever have an ability to skip any part of a game for money.

If you have ever bought something from Eververse with silver, you've paid to skip the part of the game where you earn bright dust to buy the thing.

This is wrong. There are plenty of Eververse items that have not, and never will be, sold for bright dust.

And there aren’t plenty that you can get with either bright dust OR silver?

There certainly aren't as many nowadays. And they've thankfully made it much clearer what is only available with silver vs bright dust.

Also, I don't think I've ever seen a non-mobile game ever have an ability to skip any part of a game for money.

If you have ever bought something from Eververse with silver, you've paid to skip the part of the game where you earn bright dust to buy the thing.

This is wrong. There are plenty of Eververse items that have not, and never will be, sold for bright dust.

And there aren’t plenty that you can get with either bright dust OR silver?

Also, I don't think I've ever seen a non-mobile game ever have an ability to skip any part of a game for money.

If you have ever bought something from Eververse with silver, you've paid to skip the part of the game where you earn bright dust to buy the thing.

This is wrong. There are plenty of Eververse items that have not, and never will be, sold for bright dust.

That's where the Fortnite model comes into play - the sooner a game can be released and establish that cash flow, the better, even if features are not complete.

And there we have it.

Can you expand upon this? Isn't every game hedging on future value to be successful? A game in development has no present value, since nobody can buy it. Unless you're talking about advertising pairings, tie ins, product placement, etc. But that wouldn't really change either way would it?

Creating games costs too much and takes too long to rely on future value for financing. Games are paid for by the success of some previous game - that's what publishers are for, to move money around from game to game. However, game sales are presumably very spiky and concentrated around certain times of year (e.g., the holidays). It's less risky to have a uniform distribution of income over time, because that's more or less the distribution of expenses (salaries and overhead) on development. Microtransactions solve that problem by providing a reliable cash flow. It's also true that money sooner is worth more than money later. That's where the Fortnite model comes into play - the sooner a game can be released and establish that cash flow, the better, even if features are not complete.

When I played dota 2, it was a game that was completely free. It is based off of a free mod that was for Warcraft 3. I started to play it because it was free and got some of my friends to play it. We had a great time and there were MTs in the game because otherwise they wouldn't make money. So you get random cosmetics of lower quality for just playing games. I naturally equipped them even if they weren't for most of the characters I liked playing but you never know when I might! Anyway, it came to a point where there were some cooler looking cosmetics that were for characters that I played more often. My rational thought was that I appreciated this game and I had played it enough for free that I wanted to give back to the company that made it, so I spent money on it. I think I must have played on and off for roughly 5 years and spent probably around $100 bucks. Would I have paid $60 or even $70 for it up front? No.

Were these cosmetics only available by purchase? Or could you earn them?

The ones I bought were only purchasable. I think it was possible to buy the ones you earned, but I'm honestly not sure.

Also, I don't think I've ever seen a non-mobile game ever have an ability to skip any part of a game for money.

If you have ever bought something from Eververse with silver, you've paid to skip the part of the game where you earn bright dust to buy the thing.

I might add, that you can't exactly compare a game that was made 20 years ago to a modern game. They are different beasts that take way more people and money.

So maybe they should… charge more?

Cheat codes aren't used in modern games and if they are it is for nostalgic purposes.

Why do you think this is?

When I played dota 2, it was a game that was completely free. It is based off of a free mod that was for Warcraft 3. I started to play it because it was free and got some of my friends to play it. We had a great time and there were MTs in the game because otherwise they wouldn't make money. So you get random cosmetics of lower quality for just playing games. I naturally equipped them even if they weren't for most of the characters I liked playing but you never know when I might! Anyway, it came to a point where there were some cooler looking cosmetics that were for characters that I played more often. My rational thought was that I appreciated this game and I had played it enough for free that I wanted to give back to the company that made it, so I spent money on it. I think I must have played on and off for roughly 5 years and spent probably around $100 bucks. Would I have paid $60 or even $70 for it up front? No.

Were these cosmetics only available by purchase? Or could you earn them?