Microtransactions & Live Services (but no Loot Boxes) in Anthem

Once upon a time you dressed so fine
Threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you? 

You say you never compromise

With the mystery tramp, but now you realize

He's not selling any alibis

As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes

And say do you want to make a deal?

That's the current Bioware meme right? 

Since I personally know a dev (not bioware) I can tell you, that most want to make a fun and enjoyable game.  Most don't want to create a game designed to open your wallet constantly.  It's typically the management or overlords (publishers) that give them that directive.  They typically tell them what type of monetization they want the game to have and it's up to the devs to make it happen.

The larger the publisher or studio (if self-publishing), the more likely you are to see them push the envelope on what they can get away with as far as monetization goes.  If things go south, they usually have the resources to absorb the blow-black and carry on.  Blizzard was far more careful it seems with how they designed their LB.

I think if it were left to Bioware on how to monetize the game it would be closer to what Blizzard is doing and not SWBF2.  The overlords may have different plans.

Unless BioWare are hiding under a rock (which they aren't)
they have just been gifted two wonderful opportunities:

• A monumental mess-up on their doorstep (BFII) that they can learn from
• Sufficient development time (c.1 year) to do something about it, to build a popular & successful in-game economy and game overall.

Whatever they do should be viewed as their genuine intentions, i.e. the excuse 'sorry we didn't mean that', if it's not successful, won't fly.

You are making a lot of assumptions about what has been decided and implemented already. Brenon Holmes’ comments from two months ago seem to suggest that they had not actually settled on a monetization strategy:

Also, when asked about what the worst monetization strategy he had seen was, he responded:

Not only it was, but Trion already removed that lootboxes from the game: www.mmorpg.com/rift/news/update-100-loot-box-removed-after-controversy-1000046748


The Orphiel's Mount Crate has been removed from the RIFT store - we listened to feedback, met internally to discuss and decided to pull it.

There are a TON of other great things going on for Fae Yule though, and folks seem to be enjoying them. =)

I can't speak for all the game design requests in this thread, other than to say that RIFT Dev is constantly evaluating and reviewing projects. We're all working toward getting things wrapped up before the holiday break (Trion kindly gives us the days off between Christmas and New Year's), so I wouldn't expect a whole lot of new communication until January.

Brasse

So it started, players are vigilant now.

The game stands upon the edge of a knife.
Stray but a little, and it will fail, to the ruin of all.
Yet hope remains while the Company is true.

(with apologies to Tolkein)

Everyone wants to hate on EA, and their progeny are caught in the cross-fire.

I have been thinking about this situation and frankly what concerns me more then what EA has done is that I don't see there really being any change. If only a small portion of the player base really communicates how they feel about games and the possibility of player trends showing the opposite of what people are saying does that mean in the long run all the anger and frustration will mean nothing.

Game development is a for profit enterprise so they really don't care long term about the outrage or how the public reacts to what they do and they might acknowledge it while it is considered a problem, but if it is profitable I don't see any real changes happening. Its like the reaction people online had with the statement from EA about single player and multi-player experiences. They didn't make a statement like that without evidence with even Mass Effect: Andromeda being part of the data they used. Even with Wolfenstein: The New Colossus, it scored well with critics and even won a video game award, but where it really counts is sales and if AskAGameDev is correct those aren't very strong. So do developers and publishers make games aimed at what people are saying or the trends they are seeing in game sales themselves. That is the situation that makes me nervous about lootboxes is that developers and publishers are going into safe mode right now, but a year from now with the next holiday release schedule we are going to be back here again because they were chasing the money. Just like what seems to be happening with Valve at the moment right now and skin gambling now just using PUBG skins instead of CS:GO. They made changes at the time, but it just seems to have returned and continues to exploit people with the exact same problem a year later and I can see Valve raising their hands and saying its Bluehole's responsibility and not Valve's because it is their game.

I think Bligh gets somewhat of a bad press.

You can read his book on the matter at:
gutenberg.net.au/ebooks/e00085.html

I suspect Anthem may fall into the same boat (until we know more)

I should also add if you look at the twitter backlash that happened way back when in July a very good chunk of it can be summarized in "I do not want Destiny 2.1" often followed by what the poster hated about destiny...