Summary
- Live-service battle passes prey on FOMO to promote engagement.
- Helldivers 2's Warbonds last forever, respecting players' time and commitments.
- Player-focused live-service games like Helldivers 2 set a standard for respectful monetisation and enjoyable gameplay.
I’ve long since given up on completing 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Apex Legends’ strenuous battle passes. The cosmetics no longer appeal to ༒me, and I’ve come to terms with the fact that how much time I spend completing them is not adequately compensated. Your priorities might differ, but I have a thousand games I need to play for work, and I couldꦯn’t adequately do my job while focusing so heavily on earning cosmetics in a single game no matter how much I enjoy playing it.
This season, however, Respawn introduced the time-gated Legend Challenges. These included a reward that I really wanted: a recolour of the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Heat Sink Flatline skin.🐼 I missed the cosmetic, which has been described as ‘pay-to-win’ but which I would call ‘really cool,’ when it was a Battle Pass reward, and I wasn’t going to give up another opportunity to get my hands on an even cooler purple version of the weapon.
I would wager that I put more hours into Apex Legends this season than the pജrevious four combined, and at a time when I was already busier thaꦿn ever. Work is chocka block with new games coming out, review titles to play through in my free time, and events to both coordinate and help others to make the most of. When I’m not writing, I’m editing. When I’m not at work, I’m trying to split my time between playing games for work and painting models for work.
This isn’t a complaint. My hobbies have fallen 🔯by the wayside, but I’m still able to keep my weekends free to spend time with my wife and daughter. The balance will tip in a month or two. That’s how these things work. Apex wasn’t helping, however.
I know the headline for this article says Helldivers 2, not Apex Legends, but I had to give an example of how industry-standard battle passes work. They are engagement practices, aimed at capturing your attention and forcing you to play this game instead of any o☂thers. Last sea💧son took this a step further with the Legend Challenges as well.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Helldivers 2, on the other hand, is the exact opposite. I haven’t picked up the game for ꦇover a month now, thanks to aforementioned busyness. But I know, after all that time, the piece of armour I was aiming for on the Warbond will still be waiting for me.
Warbonds are Helldivers 2’s version of battle passes, but act more like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Fortnite’s than A🎶pex’s. There’s no one path throu🎶gh the cosmetics, you simply earn currency by playing (or buying) and unlock further pages as you progress. The thing that Helldivers 2 commits to that Fortnite does not, however, is make its battle passes last forever.
There’s no expiration date on any of Helldivers 2’s warbonds. There’s no🦩 artificial FOMO that makes you panic and think “Oh, I need to play another ten hours of the game this week to unlock that back bling”. It’s an incentive to play, but never a pu❀nishment for having other commitments.
This player-focused approach to battle passes is brilliant, respectful, and the best way of monetising a live-service game I’ve seen yet. In fact, I’m more inclined to spend my hard-earned cash on extra bits and pieces꧑ because I feel like the game respects me. No, I don’t need that fancy cape, and yes I may well unlock it in six months’ time, 🍌but I might just buy it anyway.
This system was lauded when the game was released, and I was🍨 pleased with it then. But now that I’m in a particularly🅺 busy period, I appreciate it so much more. I’m not trying to cram in another Helldivers 2 mission, I don’t need to stay up late to grind out more currency. I can play when I want to, how I want to.
This in turn makes the gameplay more fun. There’s nothing worse than the Sunday night grind of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:FUT Champions to try to get an extra TOTS reward for making 11 wins (something I haven’t tried in a long time). The gameplay is frustrating, any goals conceded areꦅ infuriating, and before you know it, you’re not enjoying your hobby any more. Helldivers 2 never risks feeling like a grind, because you can switch off at any point with no consequences to your rewards or your progression.
In many aspects, Helldivers 2 is a leading light in the live-service genre, showing other companies that games-as-services can be built with the player’s best interests in mind, and that game-changing updates don’t need to be locked behind paywalls. Where other companies are anti-consumer to the point where you regret loading uꦏp the game, Arrowhead Game Studios under﷽stands and respects its players. This is what pro-consumer live-service games can look like, this is the great heights that they can achieve. When developer and player are in harmony, everybody’s happy. Except, of course, the Terminids.
