Apex Legends battle pass U-turn fails to stop Steam review bombing
Apex Legends battle pass U-turn fails to stop Steam review bombing
With Steam reviews hitting rock bottom and player numbers dwindling, the future looks a little grim for Respawn’s former hit, Apex Legends.
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Before, players could use Apex Coins to grab each new pass, earning enough from previous passes to fund their next purchase. The new system for the battle royale game would require real money transactions in addition to doubling how many battle passes would be released per season.
I don't play this kind of game and don't understand what the controversy is. What does a "battle pass" buy you? I guess they made it so people can't obtain it by just playing where before they could? Why is that something to be outraged about?
Typically you pay for a battle pass with some sort of currency that costs real money to acquire. The battle pass isn't anything on its own, but if you play the game you'll then unlock experience or whatever with the battle pass, thus unlocking whatever it contains. Often that's cosmetics for the game, sometimes useable items, and sometimes it's more of that currency that costs real money.
IMO they suck. Usually they expire at the end of the month, so if something comes up (family emergency, computer died, whatever) you wasted it and paid for nothing. It's a cheap trick to devalue a player's purchase, and to try and boost player count in lieu of good gameplay.
But apparently if you completed the battle pass, it would give you enough premium currency to buy the one they out next month. So theoretically you might only have to buy it once if you were diligent in finish the pass before it went away. Now they've taken that away because they wanted more money.
I've been playing apex for years. I don't care about ranked, and I've never spent a cent on it.
But even with some peaks where I'd play a bit every day, I don't think I've ever completed a battlepass (you can progress through it even without buying it, you just "miss out" on most of the content in it). I can't even imagine how much I'd have to play to do so.
The whole system is just a way to exploit the sunk cost fallacy, keeping people hooked on the game for longer. It's disgusting.
I know people who've come to treat these games like jobs. They feel compelled to put in the hours every day to keep getting every meaningless cosmetic they can out of it. Except by doing so they're turning down the opportunity to actually have fun playing something else once in a while. They log into these games even when they aren't in the mood for them, and even as the monotony sets in they refuse variety for fear of falling behind in this one game.
Instead of moving on, or just taking a break, some people can only quit these live service games once they reach actual burnout. And afterwards it's like they've survived an abusive relationship. They go from playing every day, to hating the game so much they refuse to even keep it installed.
Menwhile I'm still having my occasional fun with it by never even spending a cent, and only playing when I want to.
It's kind of frustrating because I keep having fun, but all my friends are swearing off these games forever, one by one. I'm running out of people to play with.
This was exactly my experience with Destiny and Overwatch. Played until burnout doing my daily chores and weekly tasks, barely getting in enough time to do everything plus enough other stuff to make me still feel engaged with the game. Spent a good amount on micros because the FOMO was real and carefully implemented. After burning out on Destiny, I realized I hated the game design and business model because the game design was a business model. Now microtransactions are a glaring red flag for me, instead of a yellow one. I even avoid online multiplayer games because almost all of them use these tactics.
To me that seems like a dumb thing to be mad about but I guess I'm not the market for battle passes
No one should be. They are a manipulative practice that results in a worse experience for everyone.
The are fueled by the fear of missing out, and heavily flavored with the sunk cost fallacy.
They keep players playing for months, sometimes years past the point where they'd normally stop because they've grown bored with a game.
And it ruins the ability for people to come back and play again after a break, because you can't take breaks without "falling behind" and "missing out". Once people stop, they hate the game like an abusive ex, and the threshold to get back into it becomes insurmountable due to the perceived "catching up" that is necessary.