Ubisoft's XDefiant Monetization Philosophy Says No to 'Pay-to-Win Mechanics' | MMORPG.com

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Ubisoft's XDefiant Monetization Philosophy Says No to 'Pay-to-Win Mechanics' | MMORPG.com

Ubisoft has revealed its monetization plans for the upcoming free-to-play arcade shooter, XDefiant

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Raagnarz

I'm as done with Ubisoft as I am with EA and Blizzard at this point. All 3 are damn near worthless, minimum viable products game design and play wise, yet with fully fleshed out and predatory cash shops and monetization practices. Its no wonder smaller game companies making games with pixel graphics are selling more copies than AAA games from these mega corps.

Scot

"I’m not sure this is as reassuring as Ubisoft thinks it is, since the impact on the non-paying player here all depends on how much grind is involved in unlocking these sorts of features."

Exactly.

"players will always be making progress towards unlocking content through its Battle Pass or challenges"

Battle Pass is the new P2W in some ways, one way or another if a game is not at least B2P they will make you pay for play and therefore "win".

dinogn

Like anyone is going to believe ubi...

Angrakhan

"This faction is available for purchase or can be unlocked through an in-game challenge requiring 700K experience."

This is literally pay to win, though. You open your wallet and bypass hours, maybe hundreds of hours, of grind. It's not that much different than buying a sword in the cash shop that also drops in a dungeon and claiming it's not pay to win because you can get the sword without paying for it.

It's not a pay wall. Maybe that's Ubisoft's confusion? It is pay to win, though.

Nasa

Game devs are disqualified to decide what is P2W.

Kyleran

Definitely time for a meme, in Ubisofts case, P2W...

olepi

Angrakhan said:

"This faction is available for purchase or can be unlocked through an in-game challenge requiring 700K experience."

This is literally pay to win, though. You open your wallet and bypass hours, maybe hundreds of hours, of grind. It's not that much different than buying a sword in the cash shop that also drops in a dungeon and claiming it's not pay to win because you can get the sword without paying for it.

It's not a pay wall. Maybe that's Ubisoft's confusion? It is pay to win, though.

I call it "pay to not play". If you don't want to grind, then you can buy your way through. As long as everything is available by playing, they can claim it isn't pay to win. 

I wonder how much incentive this gives the company to make the grind not as fun as it could be, since people will pay to avoid it. The more fun the game is, the less people will pay to avoid having to play it.

Scot

olepi said:

Angrakhan said:

"This faction is available for purchase or can be unlocked through an in-game challenge requiring 700K experience."

This is literally pay to win, though. You open your wallet and bypass hours, maybe hundreds of hours, of grind. It's not that much different than buying a sword in the cash shop that also drops in a dungeon and claiming it's not pay to win because you can get the sword without paying for it.

It's not a pay wall. Maybe that's Ubisoft's confusion? It is pay to win, though.

I call it "pay to not play". If you don't want to grind, then you can buy your way through. As long as everything is available by playing, they can claim it isn't pay to win. 

I wonder how much incentive this gives the company to make the grind not as fun as it could be, since people will pay to avoid it. The more fun the game is, the less people will pay to avoid having to play it.

This is an element of the wider problem of how revenue methods starting with the cash shop and ending up with live service and maybe now crypto have changed the nature of the gameplay. If the grind goes by like a breeze, who would pay for a "Battle Pass" etc?

What really gets me is we still have gamers who don't think the revenue set up of a game changes the gameplay much. It has been a sea change for gaming.

Ryukan

Ubisoft's XDefiant Monetization Philosophy Says No to 'Pay-to-Win Mechanics'...Yet.

*FIXED*

Theocritus

Ryukan said:

Ubisoft's XDefiant Monetization Philosophy Says No to 'Pay-to-Win Mechanics'...Yet.

*FIXED*

Right these companies often start off with good intentions and saying the right things....but money often speaks louder than words and P2W makes alot of money.

SKurj

i am sure ubi has their own definition of p2w... and that's how they will spin it..

Angrakhan

olepi said:

Angrakhan said:

"This faction is available for purchase or can be unlocked through an in-game challenge requiring 700K experience."



This is literally pay to win, though. You open your wallet and bypass hours, maybe hundreds of hours, of grind. It's not that much different than buying a sword in the cash shop that also drops in a dungeon and claiming it's not pay to win because you can get the sword without paying for it.



It's not a pay wall. Maybe that's Ubisoft's confusion? It is pay to win, though.

I call it "pay to not play". If you don't want to grind, then you can buy your way through. As long as everything is available by playing, they can claim it isn't pay to win. 

I wonder how much incentive this gives the company to make the grind not as fun as it could be, since people will pay to avoid it. The more fun the game is, the less people will pay to avoid having to play it.

Well if that's how you're going to spin it then nothing short of an actual paywall... something you must pay for in order to get access... is pay to win. Might as well just dispense with the terminology at that point because you can always just say "well you don't HAVE to pay for it. Yes it will take you an entire lifetime to grind this out as opposed to paying $19.99 to have it immediately but you don't HAVE to". I mean if we're going to let the developers get away with that, then just stop using the term pay to win at all. There will always be a way to spin it.

As to your wondering about if game companies intentionally make stuff grindy or painfully inconvenient simply to not force but at least STRONGLY encourage you to go buy stuff from the cash shop you really can stop. They absolutely do. Look at LOTRO with their "use ability X 1000 times" which is required to unlock ability Y mechanics. Oh, but wait you can go to the cash shop and buy a "booster" which cuts that in half, of course. Or look at POE which has 50 different types of currency all that take up space in your inventory and have a very small stack count. Oh, but wait there's this thing in the cash shop called a "Currency Tab" for your inventory that which automatically sorts all your currency and removes the stack limit. Normally $40 but on sale for $20 this week only. Don't miss out!

kitarad

Ubisoft are going go for some Frankensteined payment involving cryptocurrency. They will do this at some point. They have a hardon for this and fungibles. We will be seeing another iteration of this. Die, die,die !!!