Opening a premium box to receive an item unusable by your class is a classic

I think the final secret being a let down is a lesson in itself. Some people spend all this money expecting to get something grand and the just end up disappointed

I'm sad you didn't talk about how right at the end the game tells you that the MMO is losing service, you're thanked for your support, you can't play the game anymore in any way (except those who crack the server and pirate it), and you don't get your money invested back. This is a *huge* aspect of games as a service. I wish you mentioned it in this video when it was presented.

@11:10 A number of years ago, a developer (I can't remember who, i want to say EA, but it might have been Activision,) applied for a patent on a matchmaking system they'd developed, that matched newer players, not just with much higher leveled players, but specifically with people who had spent a lot of real money on gear, and skins, and whatever, so they'd get completely stomped and be "encouraged" to purchase premium equipment. I believe their wording was something along the lines of "This will enhance our ability to extract value from the player base."

One trick they missed is having 50 different currencies that you have to transform between them, it helps obscure how much money people spent. "Oh you need 100 diamond, but to get diamond you need mine keys to find the mine boss, and to get keys you need to spend Platinum which is bought with money." Or how princing is usually in unusual amounts that always leave with with too little or just a little extra money "Item cost 1000 platinum, but the closest pack is 1200p, but if you buy another 500 you can buy the cool magic horse too!" or the opposite Need a 1000? Well your choices are 800p or 1600p. Also make sure grinding is tediously slow but you can buy XP or drop boosts!

The fact that I’d never heard of this game before today is a sign that the developer was right and he was silenced for it.

Reminds me of the games "DLC Quest" and "I Can't Believe It's Not Gambling". Both are excellent parodies on the gaming industry's monetization practices, I wholeheartedly recommend that ppl check them out.

I consider myself lucky. I had a very rude awakening to all of these tricks back before micro transactions - my account got hacked and I lost hundreds of hours of progress in an MMO that I also spent real money on (for subscriptions, like Runescape). After going through the stages of grief, I realized that the entire game was just a giant grind and what I really enjoyed was the friends I hung out with while playing... That lead to D&D and the rest is history

the biggest bombshell drop was that this game was made in 2015... those practices are now so commonplace that i was sure this was made today... in other words there are probably even more tricks they use that added to that list!

There was always that trick they would use. Like you have to buy crystals and they only come in packs of 10 20 50 or 100. Meanwhile the stuff you buy with the crystals are like 8, 15, 35, and 70 or something like that. You wind up being left with crystals and tempted to buy more because they are just sitting their being wasted. It is so obvious what they are doing.

2:20 in no man's sky theres an NPC on most space stations that hands out simple side quests i never read the dialogue until i noticed one of the quests for killing sentinels was called "curious tastes" the description for the quest went something like "the client seeks to ingest pugneum (common sentinel drop) to become the ultimate lifeform. but as they currently are not the ultimate lifeform, they cannot kill sentinels, and need you to do some first to get them started."

I like that as soon as this video ended I got an ad for a pay 2 win mobile game

I know its just a small clip in the beginning but failing a 71% chance enhancement like 3 times in a row on BDO is so damn relatable lmao

The "Player won thing" announcement was always funny to see, especially when the game has tools to locate users and stuff and you find out that they either don't exist or aren't even logged into the game, lol

The real predatory systems are the ones that draw you in for months with a social group and daily routine before cranking up the screws with events and new areas that require payment to be competitive, if not to participate with your friends and peers period.

The secret is legit. You've put a value on it yourself, you waited that it's going to be something worth putting hours into this game. And the secret pointed out just that.

I have worked for a publisher of trashy-MMOs and honestly, it is so much worse than you think. For some bigger-profile games, there were literally psychologists working together with management to figure out new ways to motivate people to stay/spend more money. It is also not the devs that are behind this, but usually upper management that does not know and does not care about games. They see a product and they want this product to generate money. For that they put an enormous amount of pressure on the producers, devs, marketing & co and if you don't follow you will be replaced by someone who does. To these people, the average player that does not, or only spends a comparatively little amount of money, is essentially worthless, because why care about the guy who spent 150$ when there are 5 others that spent 11k? And i can absolutely confirm that if you spend enough money, you will get better treatment to a degree and your voice will matter more.

11:38 The moment he defeated the pvp challenger a message popped up announcing immediate closure of the server and discontinuation of the game. That point hit home the hardest. All your purchased power deleted in a single act.

I like how the armor set you were upgrading was called "Rental Set", I think it represents how all the cool gear you get is only temporary. You've got the raid gear on to make you 1000 power? cool! new dlc makes that set useless even tho you spent xx hours and xx currency to get it!

this game/video made me question the one thing in those games i never thought i'd have a second thought about, the messages of people actually getting a high quality item of the cash shop being fake. i never even once thought those could be fake to lure you in to buy more cash shop loot boxes or such, count my mind slightly blown

Watching the video of game developers at a conference discussing how to use psychological tricks commonly uses by casinos was very eye opening. The worst part is that these "games" aren't regulated. Kids can't walk into a casino and gamble but a mobile game? Starting them young and when they have little to no understanding of value vs shiny fake object.

The dedication of making an entire game just to prove a point, I love it. Gaming landscape today is a joke and 99% of the mmos released are absolute dogshit p2w garbage. Also sure value is subjective, but how do you know that you have not been brainwashed into beliving that the game actually holds value to you by the literal psychologist they employ for these type of games to extract as much money as possible for players, rather than it being your own free will that decided it. That is the terrifying part about how devious these game developers are.

What’s crazy to me is plenty of games play like this and people still play them. One of my guys at work plays a game called desert online or something like that. It’s literal days of grinding for levels unless you pay for xp boosts and stuff 8 different types of currency etc he is one of the highest levels in the game and has spent upwards of 30k playing it, doesn’t care and is proud to talk about it

If you enjoy the content and want to be notified of all the crazy stuff i've got coming up for you guys (and there are some gems incoming 😆), hit that subscribe button and lets get to that 100k baby! 🍻

The "money spent total" counter alone could've prevented a great many spenders from going off the deep end had it been implemented in any in-app-purchase based game.

I'll throw in an anecdote about the confirm messages being fake. When I played DFO as a lad, I actually messaged the name of the upgradee to congratulate them, only to be given a 'player does not exist' response. Never thought much of it til today.

This is a cute idea. Reminds me of DLC Quest - a cute little 2D platformer I played years ago where you had to buy DLC for every little thing in the game, like sprinting, sound effects, jumping, or even just moving left haha.

A picture of Maria Brink is _always_ worth it.

I love the other funny point of spending insane amounts of time(or money) to upgrade gear only for it to look identical

Another trick is what I call the ‘flashback scene’ trick, where as part of the ‘story’ you will play an extremely powerful character with end game gear during the game’s prologue, after which, you will play as a trashy character with starter gear. This gives the player a taste of what they ‘could have’, and encourages them to spend thousands upon thousands to reach that goal

This game is satirical gold, and your commentary makes it that much better. Brilliant.

Best representation of late medieval armour in the whole game industry, btw

That tip about new classes being added that are ridiculously OP compared to older classes made me think of WoW. It always confused me how Blizzard, with all the time they had to work on it, always managed to make new classes OP as hell and then taking forever to balance them. Well... now that makes sense. It was probably intentional, to drive sales of new expansions by having a new class that was OP tied to the expansion.

the speed feather thing was actually brutally brilliant. Imagine if you started Skyrim or Fallout running faster and then suddenly had to pay a bit to keep that speed. Plenty would have done so

World boss has a 6 hour timer, and has a 1/10,000 drop rate. You can buy premium items that increase your drop rate. The MVP (player who deals most damage) gets loot rights. Loot boxes with similar rates in the premium shop.

I always give games the benefit of the doubt with quest dialogue, if it repeatedly is not worth it then I will begin skimming and if it ends up hitting a point where im skipping all dialogue I will typically not continue playing the game. If its a game and setting that Im really invested in (FFXIV, Elden Ring, BG3, etc) then I almost always read literally everything and actively seek out Dialogue to learn more about the world

Theres also the "pick one of three" trick where there is supposedly a premium reward hidden, but in realit is is chance based where it is 80% chance to get the crappy reward, 19.9% chance to get the not quite trash reward, and a snowballs chance in hell of getting the premium reward. Then you can watch a video or purchase a premium subscription for a chance of opening a second box.

If it were me, I would have the game auto delete the save. To drive home the point that at the end of the day, all of that money can be gone with the flip of a switch, leaving you with no legendary weapons, no titles, no nothing. Of course, I see why he did the 'value is up to you' thing. He did warn you, he makes F2P games. He's still gotta keep players coming back.

"Returning to the marriage ending, birthday party booking that is the town's wizard" 🤣🤣🤣 Your way with words is absolutely fantastic, bravo good sir!

Loved this video that randomly appeared in my feed. First of all the game is quite funny and educational. Second you put a picture of Maria Brink. Who I've seen many times but going to see again in November. 🤘

That game definitely highlights the BS so many games use these days. Great vid, Mitch :)

I never skip quest dialogue. EVER. I'd feel like I missed something. Also, as someone who isn't very wealthy, and thus played a ton of free to play games, this gives me flashbacks. I have never spent money on one of those money-grabbing aspects, but man...trying to play a game and enjoy yourself while navigating that mess of ads and pay to win trash can be hard.

That "secret" is like actually paying for therapy.

Your style of narration is PERFECT for this video!

There was one thing missing... the quick upgrade button which costs 120% of the normal upgrade materials but you only have to klick one button instead of draging it over and over again

I used to play one of those mmo castle games. You know the kind where you have your castle, upgrade buildings and train troops to fight other players. They had an event where it was literally. “Let’s see who can spend the most this weekend!” No effort to obscure the cash grab. And people spent. The top players spent thousands each month. Absolutely insane.

I am an avid "Gacha game" player, depends on which publisher, sometimes in Event side story, you do get alot of free goodies, but on the same time the Event feature character for you to pull and thus, if you are an addict, you might be enticed to get that Event Character. Although if you are resourceful, you can actually get by without paying a single cent and instead finish the daily quest and weekly quest, some gacha game have a limit how much you can buy for a week or month. The game I was playing is Arknights by Hypergryph, and published by Yostar. So far they been pretty generous compared to other gacha games or pay to win games. Although their gift might be a "trap"

In black desert online, I used to PM players who have done their upgrade thing, most of the time, they were said to be offline.

Some 12-15 years ago I started playing a P2W browser game called Seafight, because many of my _normie_ friends were playing it. This was one of my first times playing a P2W game, so I had no idea about any of this. But a few months and about 200€ later I started noticing the shadiness of their business model: among other things, you never really progressed in any significant way without paying, you were only ever given the illusion that you could progress without paying. I then lectured all my friends about that at the pub, and... no one cared. They all kept playing that crap for years. And of course, they all resorted to cheating (playing dishonestly themselves) by using bots to do the grinding for them, because of course the game never progressed in any honest way. But even then, the pace of their progression with cheats was still that of a snail compared to what it would be if they paid money for stuff. Since then I have a special place in my turds for P2W games... And tbh I can't think of a P2W model that isn't wrong.

See! THIS is what we've been waiting for! Upfront greed, laziness and narcissism. Finally a game that truly follows the industry standard.

the blue screens popping up literally makes my brain go "oh blue screen of death" every time lmao, i wonder if that is by design

When I opened up the video an ad popped up and it was some gameplay for "AFK journey". I find it hilarious with the title of the video

5:44 I have played Travian for years as a kid, where at the start you get a week of premium, after which you almost feel powerless. I was just a kid but the tactic was quite clear, and yet the "Your feather has expired, you can't run now" still gets used to this day...

The thing about the "players getting achievements" messages being fake. I checked this too. Playing Star Trek Online, I noticed the name of one of my friends "just got a legendary t6 ship" from a loot box. The guy wasnt even online. It takes real players names, who are not online, and then tells the server that they got some sweet loot by spending real money. Now, it actually does produce these messages if you do it, but it also makes them even if you dont.

the worst is when the in game gold from looting is useless as a different currency is used for actual game progress

Some mechanics that'd help future games: make crafting skill based rather than exclusively resource, time, and RnG (chance) based; for low drop chance items allow the collection of "fragments" which wouldn't take more than one inventory slot (max) for each kill/farm so even if your luck is trash through sheer time and effort the item is still attainable; have NPC vendors that can sell items players sold to them purchasable (not just an auction type system).

My favorite (as in the one I hate the most) that games pull is the "obtain x items" quest or crafting requirement, where the item is randomly dropped from something (with corresponding low drop rate). It's particularly insidious to me, because on the surface it seems harmless enough, but it instigates the sunk cost fallacy mindset with regards to time and primes you to accept it in the overarching structure of the game. My prime example is when all my friends were going crazy over WoW back when it originally got released, and so I finally tried playing it by starting a new character on a friend's account. I'm pretty sure the actual first quest I got was "obtain 10 wolf pelts" or something similar. So I go to the area with wolves, kill a wolf; no pelt. "Strange that the wolf didn't have a pelt" I said. I kill five wolves; no pelts. I kill another 2 or 3, and one of them dropped a pelt! "How many wolves am I going to have to kill for these damn pelts?" I asked. I clear the area of wolves, and get maybe 2 pelts. "How am I supposed to get 10? There are no more wolves". My friend tells me I have to wait for the wolves to respawn and clear the area again. "WHAT? That's ridiculous!" I immediately saw it for the time sink that it was. It was deliberately designed to waste the player's time (time that was being paid for with a subscription) and was using variable-ratio reinforcement (aka gambling) in order to hook people into the task. I ended up having to clear the area 3 or 4 times to get the wolf pelts I needed, which took maybe half an hour or more. For the intro quest that was to show you how completing quests works. It immediately trained players to expect they will need to waste unreasonable amounts of time on menial tasks with progress gated by a random reward schedule. WoW, for me, marked the transition of games from being games into the sophisticated Skinner boxes they are today.

This would be a interesting idea for a game franchise. You get an “allowance” of “real money you can spend” and tax brackets are the difficulty of the game, F2P being essentially very hard and oil prince being very easy. And have a bunch of silly quests like this and in the end you take down the big micro transaction monster

When the speed feather expired Metin 2 came to my mind. You literally have to buy "wind shoes" for real money to run fast which is course expires after a while.

I like how the very 1st dialog box already exploded the 4th wall 😂

I always have a code that follows, "When a game offers real money transactions, you are as much obligated to cheat through the game with no moral delima", if a game exploit you, you can exploit it as much as everyone can.

Your WoW horse story rang a bell. I was a WoW beta tester and played from the moment went gold right up until I was farming the hunter armour set. It was warmaster voone in lower black rock spire who did it for me. He supposedly dropped the set gloves. On the 200th kill without seeing them drop I quit out of the game, deleted it and never looked back.

Random observation, but its actually cool how you slide when you run fast. Almost like a cool drift effect that makes it look like you’re going faster

2:20 Personally I'm the same way. I will usually speed through/skip dialogue in quests (where available) and look it up later. Though sometimes I will read through the dialogue if it feels right. IE: End of a large quest chain or boss fight.

You know, it's funny. South Korea dove into individual monetization so incredibly early compared to the west, I remember thinking it could never work in the west (and frankly I was glad it wouldn't). Jump forward to today and I wish I could go back to that earlier time so bad. Back when games were finished when they were first sold, back when content wasn't aggressively scaled back so they had room for DLC. Back when singleplayer games didn't sell "time savers" and instead just had dev cheat codes that weren't removed from the final version of the game.

I never skip NPC text in MMOs. I don't know why; but it is part of the RPG experience and helps with immersion.

Wargaming (World of Tanks fame) takes these tactics even further. They have patents on manipulating everything from the RNG for penetration and damage to matchmaking based on whether or not someone's profitable. If you're profitable enough they subtly tweak things so you invariably get favorable matchmaking and good rolls on shot accuracy and damage, if not the game begins to subtly work against you.

Underrated channel, needs more boosting. Great videos bud keep it up!

I have a friend that plays multiple MMOs who tries to get me to play one or another every once in a while, this is spot on in my experience. It's so transparent if you know about the mechanics, and it hurts to see people fall right into it

Wow.... this was eerie actually. Like it's dystopian. I don't play games with monetization shit, usually, so this was a learning experience for me.

Great video. Great commentary.

I always read the quest text. It drives anyone I'm partied with up a wall because I take my time to savor the text.

The psychology into making games is wild. And a whole lot more predatory then is led on to believe

Chance based nonsense exists in games because gambling is addictive. The worst pay2win games employ auction-house style bidding. Bidding against another player in "PvP" or even bidding against a bot that you think is a player, the amount you are spending is only relevant to the amount other people are spending in the end. Therefore, you must outbid the player/bot. Then when you think you've won, they introduce the cross server events.

Casinos employ similar tactics as announcing via text that players falsely upgrade or purchase newer better gear. Casinos will announce false winners followed by upbeat music to prompt casino goers to spend more, faster to try to win themselves

i gave up on the upgrading section. i wasn't going to spend hours on something to find out something i could figure out in 2 minutes. i salute you on getting trough that. despite that the game could probably be remade today and have hours of new greedy tricks to add.

It truly is scary how much of this game can be applied to the modern day.

And legitmate thanks to you for playing your role in the current gaming landscape: Creating the hyperedited playthrough/guide so I can take a shortcut and learn from your mistakes, not having to figure it out for myself or, even better, letting me play it vicariously through you, letting you do all the hard work while I lay on my couch and mindlessly consume snacks.

ya on the topic of reading quest text in MMOs. i never did playing WoW, but when i started FFXIV about 8 years ago i told myself i was going to read every drop of quest text and though i've played it off and on again since, i have always stuck to the rule of reading quest text. on single player games i still read all the quest text at least on the first play though

I've enjoyed a few of your videos. Have my sub. A drop in the bucket, but one more closer to 100k. Good luck Friend.

4:45 lecture 2 was exactly how I lost my innocence as a F2Per. There was this game called Fightback that had this offer with the in-game premium money. Curiously, you were able to earn said money by playing the game. When I finally got enough, the offer never showed up again. Words can't describe my emotions at that moment.

The truth is that MMORPGs were always 'pay to win'... Except the currency was time. Anyone that was time rich had the advantage.

What is the song used in the background of the intro? I've been looking for a name of that song, but haven't found one yet.

i remember accidentally getting invincible like my 4th week while grinding shards for the legend quest. I was like oh yeah he drops a mount lmao

I love that it moves 10 cents a clicks, as sort of a reminder of how painful it is to part with your money

Thank you for your service. I wouldn't have the patience to play this through.

I love the concept, I love the video....sadly the only thing it made me want to do is go farm Icecrown for that damn mount. Funny thing, I just got the mount from the Vortex Pinnacle yesterday during the Timewalking Event. It only took 14 years.

I miss games that were fun, with no strings attached. Just a decade ago everyone can buy a game copy, share it with a friend and even play together on a split-screen, that was a great times for gaming

I found one aspect of free to play games like card games/deck building is they usually give you a bunch of free stuff at first enough to build a basic deck and play but then grinding the game for free content even while successful goes at a snails pace while even if you are skilled you will eventually get to a point where you are playing against people who have spent money on the game and have perfect decks to the point that even if you are as good as them you will lose because you dont have the legendary or epic stuff you need creating frustration and temptation to spend money to remain competitive. Theres the other aspect is that usually these games are very low budget so they might offer you a 5-10$ deal for a combo purchase that is worth the money, most people wouldnt shy away from 5-10$ once and then quit playing the game after they get bored of it, but that 5-10 dollars is pure profit say you get 10,000 asses in the seats to play and they each spend 5$ and due to distribution of phones or steam its quite easy to get them there with no overhead for you, you just made $50,000 off of 10,000 people spending 5 bucks once, not to mention if you get say 100,000 people and on top of the $5 they spend $2.50 three times on little things hoping to get lucky and then out of that 100,000 people you got into playing the game 50 of them are whales who spend $1000s on stupid cosmetics or buying everything because they want every type of deck to be viable based on the games meta. Heroes of the Storm was a F2P game designed by the devs who wanted it as a love letter to the fans and had a poor monetization system that was purely cosmetic while also allowing players to just easily grind the game when Heroes 2.0 came out to earn all the skins if they wanted to, especially giving loot and xp boosts to veteran players based on the levels of their characters played. Activision canceled development on that game within a year and a half because they could not monetize the game successfuly and while being at the peak of popularity and happiness of the player base due to the devs being good, it just cost too much money for the CEOs. Coupled with the failing forced esports scene. Again going to Blizzard-Acti and WC3 reforged its very clear no attempt to monetize the game beyond the initial first purchase price of $40-$50, its clear from the graphics and promises made of re-done animated cutscenes that WC3 reforged would have taken much more resources to develop a polished product so it was released as a half finished mess while everyone forgot about that debacle as activision knew that with the blizzard brand they could release Diablo 4, 3 years later with no hitch because people dont have long term memories while loving brand recognition. Nevermind that they actually develop a good product its about psychological exploitation and gameplay loops, and brand awareness rather than making something thats good, if you pay off 50 influential e-celebs and women to play your game, get megan fox to advertise it you can use marketing, status and superificial graphics to get people to spend 90$ on a multiplayer game 4 days early because you dont want to miss out on the fun.

I like how this of all games makes you start the game with a historically accurate knight. I would pay for many games to have armor and weapons like those.

I subscribed specifically for your soothing voice. It was genuinely pleasant listening to you talk about the p2w game and game mechanics it presented.

Now this... is actually a huge masterpiece.

I never skip Runescape quest text. Always the funniest or most interesting stuff. Its not just filler.

As a former BDO player with over 1300hrs, this hit home very very hard.

I like to read if the text is engaging. When I was younger and had more time there are a few games that I hadn't been reading, the quest dialogue would catch my eye later, and then I'd restart the game.

I’ve learned to appreciate most text and npc encounters in games and don’t skip dialogue (unless I read it before the voice finishes, if there’s voice acting in it). Then again, I don’t play MMOs, nor do I play very story / dialogue dense rpgs other than Zelda and FF. I’ve learned the hard way that skipping text usually results in missing important clues, like an enemy weakness, treasure/ mission location, less known mechanic tutorials, or even mere cardinal directions to reach interesting locations. My little bro skips all dialogue and story, even in games he’s genuinely invested in or playing for the first time. I find myself having to play with him just so he can properly learn to play because I feed him basic game info. I can’t help feeling I’m part of the problem due to this. 😅

I’m only 2 minutes in, and the sword sheath being on the same side as the hand wielding the sword is killing me.

"The game universe will be shut down starting from today. Us at (dev team name here) thank you for all the support you've given us." My god, this is so accurate to 2014 😭

This sort of reminds me of the old flash game Upgrade Complete where you had to take out a loan at the start of the game just so you could buy the most basic UI to play the game and as you earned money you had to pay to upgrade the UI, the controls and your ship and weapons while also trying to earn enough money to pay your loan back.

once saw a game that gave u the option to see ur progression if u paid (which was necessary if u wanted to not blindly grind until u got to the appropriate level)