If you still play CoD nowadays then you are actively supporting the problem.

Thats the neat part, just dont.

This kind of thing is why I dont get excited for steam sales now. Oh, 50% off Recent AAA Game? Haha, yeah, half off the base price, but the entire game is DLC now and each of those is still full price, and there's a dozen of them.

Reviews are mixed: not a great start

More than not a great start: Only people who have bought the game are allowed to review it, so reviewers are already biased towards liking the game, because only somebody who thinks they would enjoy the game would spend money on it. It's basically impossible to get a strong negative score by just being run of the mill awful. So "mixed" means that about 50% of people who though they would enjoy the game, didn't, which is quite damning.

It's for people with more money than brains.

Short answer: you wouldn't buy this game, given your valid criticisms.

This type of extortionate pricing policy speaks to the general user base being nobs, die hard try hards and probably a toxic gaming environment. Having a barrier to entry in any activity prevents total idiots from entering. Consoles have made it easier for people who don't understand how to operate a PC to play games but that necessarily means those games will be replete with obnoxious people. The advent of smartphones has done that for the internet.

When people may get into a competitive game, data shows that they commit to it as their primary game.

It becomes a part of their identity. You see things like Leage of Legends going strong despite a slow down in new players - people just commit to it for better or for worse, likely because most of the skills they’ve gained in it and friends they’ve made will not transfer to other games. Even other FPS games have different nuances that are non trivial once a player becomes serious about winning.

Take Wild Rift vs Mobile Legends Bang Bang. MLBB is objectively a worse rip off of League of Legends and the Chinese game Glory of Kings, but it was first to market on mobile. Now that League has released their mobile version with immense polish and quality, many mobile moba gamers just aren’t interested - they’re already totally invested in their main game, despite it being proved in court that it’s a cheap copy. (Not cheap as in $$$ though)

When you’re a kid, spending time on any competitive game will be fun (if you can handle the baseline toxicity) since you will start bad at most of them. When you get older there is a real cost to switching, you will not have as much fun until you build up the years of muscle memory that would be needed to even approach your skill at the previous game.

Because of the lock in, if a competitive game finds a sizeable enough player base and lasts a good handful of years, the devs essentially get free rein to milk their cow as they see fit.

1. This game was not a good COD.
2. This game was released in 2021, so it's like if you buy now FIFA 2021 or NBA 2021, nobody is playing it.
3. The 175€ DLC is just cosmetics. Cammos for the weapons, skins operators and so on. Not needed.
4. COD Points are just to buy cosmetics like the included in the 175€ DLC, so it's not pay to win. Just pay to look "cool".

PS: Don't buy this shit.

I took a break from necesse after no lifing it for weeks after I discovered it. Now that it's just hit 1.0 I managed to gift a copy to a friend, and watching him outgrow my hard earned knowledge in a day with some guidance in mechanics was probably the most satisfaction I've felt this year.

Indies are carrying the industry and have been for a long time. Hmu for some necesse.

You don't. You play single player games like me and get to experience cool stories instead of dopamine lacking rage inducing PvP games.

There is plenty of shit on steam that I wouldn't buy, just don't buy it

Modern Warfare was peak CoD

It's not for you, you are not the target audience. The target audience is the people who buy MADDEN/FIFA every year.

Why would anybody support genocidal imperial propaganda in their home?

I made that mistake years ago with COD. Never again.

You are missing the most important issue. It only runs on Windows!

Because you like Call of Duty so much it's the only game you ever play? 🤷‍♂️

I hate this shit, and it really sucks because I like competitive games, and all the competitive games made since, like, 2015 have been loaded with FOMO MTX bullshit which the devs exckusively focus on while balance and bug fixes get tossed to the way side. They are banking on players having more fun spending money than actually playing a fun game.

Bro the CoD ship sailed years ago. They just don’t innovate and release the same shit year after year. Buy something else. I’d recommend Factorio.

I feel like they could have called CoD Points something other than CP. 🤣

I played Tekken 3 in PSX when i was a kid. One CD had everything, many modes, many characters, ton of fun.

Ffw to 2 years ago, i think to play with a friend Tekken again, searching in Steam Tekken only to see that it has 24 DLCs, many of them that are fighters (game has 16 unlockable characters, and 14 more being paid DLC)...

And they don't understand why people pirate, run away from AAA games and go for indie games instead.

They completely understand... the numbers saying that they're making money hand over fist and the number of people who care is sadly minuscule.

These games have hit a critical mass where people will casually buy them because they're friends are and so its a common ground game to play with buddies.

I don't think we can ever rely on consumers pushing back on anti consumer practises because of the reality of people.

Not everyone can afford to care about every issue.

As a result, boycotts are very unlikely to work in the modern world. There is just too much all at once for any one person to care about all of them, so even if you, lets say, care about 1% (a really high estimate) of things that are wrong in the world, and are willing to act, if we extrapolated that out to the whole population, the only things that would move would need to have double digit percentages of peoples care overlapping before anything stuck.

Really, the answer is that you simply need a government that cares about its people/consumer rights.

The USA and Canada, both are very far away from having governments like that.

Europeans are a lot luckier, but yet still, there is plenty to go.

Ah it's very simple, you would buy this if you'd made your whole personality about being a GAMER, where you believe that the only real games are FPS PvP War Simulation, and everyone that plays anything else is a poseur.

Why would I buy this?

I can only think of one reason, because it's the game your friends are playing.

You have two choices; buy the shitty game with the understanding that the game itself is not what matters but the time spent playing with your friends. Or, don't buy the game and spend the next few weeks, or months, not playing with your friends and hope they grow bored of the game soon.

If I have to consult a pricing chart, I'm not buying your game.

Thanks to modern video games being barely functional slop most of the time, I got into emulation. All these games work beautifully and I have a massive catalogue of high quality games, with creative contents that would not get made anymore today.

I got Necesse too! It was about 6 bucks. Can't beat that price. Runs on a potato also.

You need to get cod because everybody has cod. Its cod. You ever told a colleague/schoolfriend/acquaintance/anyone that you like video games? Their next question is "what prestige cod are you". Cod is love. Cod is life. Cod is the game. You're not a loser are you?

I can’t say I like how /Games often circles around negative attention rather than positive.

Activision spent billions on marketing so people will buy these stupid Ultra Editions. Even negative attention gets people thinking about and talking about the game.

Instead, post about the cool indie games out that you think deserve far more attention than this battle pass slop. Let Activision come check up on us and cry because for all their efforts no one even cares to hate on their game.

Theres an asymmetric game out as a demo, called Carnival Hunt. It has a really unique aesthetic, and isn’t all that fun yet, in part because of the formula being refined and players getting better at it. But I like the idea: Rather than TCM’s idea of unlocking doors towards an exit, the survivors, “bunnies”, are trying to climb the floors of a large building, with each method of ascending a floor requiring various tools and making noise. Some ways up are harder to set up but easier to repeat, others only work if the killer is ignoring them.

I'm all for hating on CoD, but the DLC "content" is skins and minor cosmetics, it really doesn't add anything to the game and isn't necessary at all. Also the CoD Points are for cosmetics as well. There's a lot of shitty things you can and should say about Vanguard, but it is not pay to win.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. Can you put a few more red circles on the photo to help? Maybe a couple arrows too.

I wish Steam would put the 3rd-party requirements nice and obvious above the buy button. Along with "uses AI content", "in-app purchases" and "always online requirement" banners too. And more too, every game should be shamed before users get to the buy button.

Play Necesse or Abiotic Factor. Both just left early access recently and are great real games for good prices and aren't stuffed with the modern AAA bloat

Edit: I posted this just before reading the last paragraph... Well, glad it's taking off lol