Requesting refunds on old Google Play and iTunes

[quincy]

They shouldn't make the game so damn grindy. Just another case of annoying you into making purchases. Of course you don't find this out until you've been playing for awhile.

You always have the option not to play any damn grindy games.

 

[Just Blue]

You always have the option not to play any damn grindy games.

What does "grindy" mean?

 

[Taxing Matters]

Annoy you into buying stuff? Gotta say that has never happened to me. Now...I've been annoyed into walking away from a purchase, but never into purchasing something.

I'm guessing you aren't much of a gamer.

The game companies have become very adept at psychology and figuring out how to encourage people to make the IAP. Slow down the game to make it just annoying enough that when offered a way to speed up progress for what appears to be a small amount of money (maybe 99 cents or a couple bucks), the player is going to be tempted to do that. The problem is that those IAP start adding up, and some players sink hundreds or even thousands of dollars into the games without really realizing how much they spend on it. It's particularly troubling when these games are sold to kids who haven't yet matured enough to be able to resist these tactics.

 

[quincy]

What does "grindy" mean?

I have no idea.

 

[Taxing Matters]

What does "grindy" mean?

"Grindy" in computer gaming means having to repeat the same actions again and again to progress through the game or unlock a needed/wanted item. Many games have some degree of grind to them. The problem is when the grind becomes so bad that the game becomes no longer fun and then the game comes in to sell you a way to avoid the grind to achieve the same thing. So when a player says a game is really grindy that's the sign of a bad game design from a game play perspective. But might be good for a developer looking for a cash grab with p2w.

 

[Just Blue]

"Grindy" in computer gaming means having to repeat the same actions again and again to progress through the game or unlock a needed/wanted item. Many games have some degree of grind to them. The problem is when the grind becomes so bad that the game becomes no longer fun and then the game comes in to sell you a way to avoid the grind to achieve the same thing. So when a player says a game is really grindy that's the sign of a bad game design from a game play perspective. But might be good for a developer looking for a cash grab with p2w.

lol...I went and asked lil'blu about it. She explained the psychology of gaming/gamers. She also explained "grinding" although she never heard it called "grindy" before.

And no...I am not a gamer. The last time I played a video game was late in the 20th century and it was Super Mario Brothers. Yes....I'm old.

 

[quincy]

lol...I went and asked lil'blu about it. She explained the psychology of gaming/gamers. She also explained "grinding" although she never heard it called "grindy" before.

And no...I am not a gamer. The last time I played a video game was late in the 20th century and it was Super Mario Brothers. Yes....I'm old.

Some games can be fun to play but I worry about those who substitute computer game play for real life. There are game addicts who not only violate terms of game use to get ahead in the game (like EXPotemkin did) but who spend their money on games that is needed for real life expenses (like food or rent), or who are unable to drag themselves away from the computer for hours (to the detriment of their health).

I hope EXPotemkin can see the positives in his banning and uses this forced free time to find something productive to do.

 

[EXPotemkin]

Some games can be fun to play but I worry about those who substitute computer game play for real life. There are game addicts who not only violate terms of game use to get ahead in the game (like EXPotemkin did) but who spend their money on games that is needed for real life expenses (like food or rent), or who are unable to drag themselves away from the computer for hours (to the detriment of their health).

I hope EXPotemkin can see the positives in his banning and uses this forced free time to find something productive to do.

Nope. I've been a gamer all my life and will just move on to something else. I have a job and a fiance so I'm not some lonely basement dweller like you see in internet memes. My fiance plays video games as well and it's one of the activities we bond over.

 

[EXPotemkin]

Annoy you into buying stuff? Gotta say that has never happened to me. Now...I've been annoyed into walking away from a purchase, but never into purchasing something.

It's different with mobile games where you've already invested a lot of time or money into your account. They wait until later on to pull these shenanigans.

 

[EXPotemkin]

The problem with free to play (f2p) games is that they have to make money from something else since you don't pay to play (p2p). Of course that means they monetize the games with in app purchases (IAP). But how games use IAP varies widely. The best of them limit IAP to non essential elements of the game, like purely cosmetic items including different outfits or skins, extra mounts/pets, etc. You see that a lot on PC games. PC gamers are less tolerant of IAP abuses because of the history of PC games and the number of good games you can still get on PC that don't go crazy with it. But the trend has been increasingly towards developers getting greedy and doing two things that are more abusive to go for the cash grab.

The first is the pervasive use of loot boxes. Most loot boxes are essentially a form of gambling since you pay for the loot boxes but do not know what you will get in the box; the rewards are random. Most of the items you can get are pretty worthless (and in some games outright crap) while only a few items are really what players want. So if you want a particular item, you may have to buy a lot of boxes to get it. And the animation and sounds of opening the loot crates strongly mirror using slot machines. They are designed to play off the same emotional response people have using slot machines. It's not surprising then that some people have developed gambling addiction like symptoms when using them, causing them to spend absurd amounts of money on the crates. The problem is so bad in some games that several countries, including Belgium, the U.K., the U.S., and China have passed or are considering legislation that would regulate or ban the use of loot boxes at least to people under a certain age, usually age 18.

The second trend has been going for pay to win (p2w) grabs. P2W games are designed in such a way that the game is very annoying to play (or even realistically impossible to play) and progress past a certain point unless you buy items to get around it. So making a game very grindy but offering you ways to avoid the grind by buying something with real world money is a one very common way to do p2w. You see p2w far more often in mobile games. Indeed the reputation of mobile games generally is that most are pretty bad and are filled with the worst abuses of p2w. While a few mobile games are good, most are pretty much trash. But they are cheap to make and can make a lot of money as long as they can hook a few people who will pay a lot for IAP, known in the game industry as "whales". As long as they have enough whales the worst game developers won't care that the rest of the players think the game is terrible. It's a sad state of affairs and its why I avoid mobile games altogether. A lot of gamers, especially older ones that remember gaming before f2p games absolutely hate p2w. But there are enough gamers, particularly teens who have only ever seen a game market that has these games, are willing to pay up for p2w stuff. Its even worse in the Asian markets since those players have a higher tolerance for grindy games than Western players do. That's due to the history of game development in Asia.

And at the very bottom of the barrel are the developers who put the p2w stuff in loot boxes.

The game you played is one that appears to do just that: it combines both p2w elements and puts them in loot boxes. Yet it isn't the worst of these games since it came out a few years ago before the worst offenders entered the scene. When getting new games today, especially mobile games, you need to expect that most of them will have one or both of these elements to some degree. If the game starts to get real grindy and you have to buy stuff to make any realistic progress, ask yourself whether it is really worth it. You can end up spending a lot more money than you realize with IAP. They make really easy to spend the money and make it tempting when it allows to avoid hours of grinding or when you need to have the item to win and can't get it from game play at all. I wish more gamers would opt for good p2p games that lack the loot boxes and p2w elements that f2p games employ. Or even pay subscriptions for games to get rid of those elements. Those games tend to be much better, but sadly they don't actually make as much money as f2p with aggressive IAP as long as they get some good whales. And what we end up with are a lot of sub par games because players are tricked into thinking the games are "free" when in reality you have to pay out a lot if you really want to reach the top levels.

You explained it incredibly well. I've wasted over $4,000 dollars since I started 3 years ago and played probably close to 4-7 hours a day.

I have a very love/hate relationship with the game. I hate playing the arena mode for hours on end just so I can get the currency to buy heals and revives to do challenging content which is where the actual fun is. So yeah, I ran a bot to do it for me as I hate that aspect of the game.

 

[EXPotemkin]

And no...I am not a gamer. The last time I played a video game was late in the 20th century and it was Super Mario Brothers. Yes....I'm old.

Hey now. I own a lot of those "old" games on the original cartridges. Honestly wish we could go back to paying for the game once and you got everything it has to offer. Now they all try to trick you into paying over and over again.

 

[Just Blue]

You explained it incredibly well. I've wasted over $4,000 dollars since I started 3 years ago and played probably close to 4-7 hours a day.

I have a very love/hate relationship with the game. I hate playing the arena mode for hours on end just so I can get the currency to buy heals and revives to do challenging content which is where the actual fun is. So yeah, I ran a bot to do it for me as I hate that aspect of the game.

4-7 hours a day? On a video game?? Yikes! You should just do the withdrawal now...because you will not be able to play like that when you have children.

 

[Just Blue]

Hey now. I own a lot of those "old" games on the original cartridges. Honestly wish we could go back to paying for the game once and you got everything it has to offer. Now they all try to trick you into paying over and over again.

I have a Nintendo with SMB2 (circa 1995/6)...My DD loves it. I have horrible hand/eye coordination so I stink at it. Like really bad. DD takes after Dad that way...

 

[EXPotemkin]

4-7 hours a day? On a video game?? Yikes! You should just do the withdrawal now...because you will not be able to play like that when you have children.

My fiance can't have children physically and we're still casually talking about adoption. So unless you mean our cat family they're pretty self sufficient. Lol

 

[Just Blue]

My fiance can't have children physically and we're still casually talking about adoption. So unless you mean our cat family they're pretty self sufficient. Lol

Don't your cats jump up in your lap while you're playing? Ours do that to DD...and right now I have a 17 pound cat plopped under my arm with his head on my .... He tried to plop on the computer but I pushed him off.