Comment on This is definitely one of the strangest cash grabs I've ever seen. Ll
wccrawford@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The disc is 100% trash. People that buy this want the cards, keychains, and (especially) the exclusive in-game items.
I am surprised that it doesn’t also come with some in-game premium currency, though.
As for $40 in-game… That alone is going to net you some trash. You’ll pull a lot more on the free gems you get just for exploring and playing. Sure, you could get a great character, but the odds are back-loaded so that you generally won’t pull a 5-star in the first 70 pulls. $40 is like 40 pulls, maybe?
$40 is like 40 pulls, maybe?
It depends on how you spend it. The best bang for the buck top-up pack - the $99 one - works out to about 20 pulls per $40 (this includes first-time purchase bonus). If you spent your $40 on the $5 monthly subscription (and logged in every day to claim it) it would work out to 160 pulls for your $40 - but it would take you 8 months to claim.
Yeah, at least some in-game currency is really the least they could have done if you’re gonna pay money to just get the base game to begin with since it’s F2P (pay-to-win) otherwise. Complete waste of money even for people who play and regularly spend money on these types of games.
Buttflapper@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Yeah, but at that rate, why not just launch a store then and sell those items? Blizzard has their own store. Plenty of franchises do. It’s so weird to see a disc version of a free game. Can you imagine if fortnite did that? I don’t remember if they ever had a disc version of their game, but if they did launch one today, people would be scratching their heads
wccrawford@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Honestly, free-2-play economics are so baffling that nothing they do surprises me.
There’s a Genshin Impact McDonalds collab where you have to buy a very specific happy meal to get some in game wings (which I very much want) and some other garbage. I actually considered just buying the meal and giving the food to someone else (homeless?) because I can’t eat that crap on my diet. But instead, I settled for telling everyone around me that I want the code if they get one, and I’ll just hope.
How does that help Genshin Impact? I imagine it helps in the same way as this nonsense physical copy. People get excited about physical copies, even in normal boxes, and they get excited about exclusive items that can’t be obtained any other way. That pulls in a little money directly from the sales of the plastic, but it also creates a ton of buzz around the game like this whole thread.
I think. As I said, it’s pretty baffling. I have to file it under “there’s no such thing as bad PR” most of the time.