Dark patterns are dark patterns, even if “the community” is more or less happy. Just means that it’s working. Being owned by Tencent actually does give them the freedom to “just be profitable” instead of squeezing each player for more and more revenue YOY, but the game still uses every retention mechanic in the book and leverages fake value by putting the MTX currency on “really good sales! Look how good the limited time deal is!!!” to keep people shelling out.
Tencent is diversified enough that they’ll probably never feel the need to tighten the screws on the Warframe studio directly.
Yeah that’s kind of the point with dark patterns. That’s not a term I made up either. Warframe isn’t as rife with them as othergames but the “forever GAAS” platform is nearly always leveraging patterns like this in some way.
I am aware that it is a thing, I just don’t see why you are insisting that, because of the model Warframe operates under, the developers are evil.
I think they are doing 10X better at putting the money back into the game and also using it to support the community aspects than any other live service game out there. I believe they have worked hard to make that happen and deserve props for not fucking over their fanbase like other developers, such as Bungie, do.
Dark patterns are dark patterns, even if “the community” is more or less happy. Just means that it’s working. Being owned by Tencent actually does give them the freedom to “just be profitable” instead of squeezing each player for more and more revenue YOY, but the game still uses every retention mechanic in the book and leverages fake value by putting the MTX currency on “really good sales! Look how good the limited time deal is!!!” to keep people shelling out.
Tencent is diversified enough that they’ll probably never feel the need to tighten the screws on the Warframe studio directly.
You can play the game and not spend a penny on MTX to get the premium currency, this is why I said look it up.
So, the investors are happy, the players are happy, but the developers are actually evil because “dark patterns”?
Yeah that’s kind of the point with dark patterns. That’s not a term I made up either. Warframe isn’t as rife with them as other games but the “forever GAAS” platform is nearly always leveraging patterns like this in some way.
I am aware that it is a thing, I just don’t see why you are insisting that, because of the model Warframe operates under, the developers are evil.
I think they are doing 10X better at putting the money back into the game and also using it to support the community aspects than any other live service game out there. I believe they have worked hard to make that happen and deserve props for not fucking over their fanbase like other developers, such as Bungie, do.