Battle Passes Are TERRIBLE But Effective

The amount of XP needed to level up was ridiculous but one thing that’s not fun is Halo infinite’s battle pass infinite’s battle pass is I get that this is a free to play game here’s a news flash they made the game free to play challenge swaps and double XP

Tokens barf 800 000 XP in a nine week period they’re mainly just getting filler content with icons voice lines and sprays nothing better than progressing through a whole play session of Call of Duty just to get a charm that’s for Cold War why do they offer you to buy things on

The menu for the wrong game for those unfamiliar with battle passes it’s a monetization system where players earn upgrades and cosmetics by simply playing the game and completing various challenges generally battle passes are seasonal being active for three to four months and are then replaced by a new

Season of content which starts the process all over again battle passes are a way for companies to keep players hooked as they’re incentivized to spend time on one game to fully progress through its battle pass one of the earliest examples of a battle pass is in Dota 2. leading up to the biggest

Tournament of the year the international valve released the compendium on May 6 2013. the compendium was a battle pass that slowly provided players with extra in-game Cosmetics such as a new Courier skin but apart from just playing the game to progress through the compendium players could also do things like

Predict Tournament results the result was an all-in-one answer to many of the community’s desires along with providing fans with some extra perks during the tournament 25 of the compendium’s 10 price tag went directly to the prize pool which provides an extra little incentive to teams competing as well so

How successful was the first ever compendium battle pass in the end it added 1 million two hundred seventy four thousand three hundred and eighty dollars to the initial 1.6 million dollar prize pool making it the largest prize pool for an Esports tournament up until that point eventually the record

Would be broken just a year later by the international 2014 which saw a whopping 9 million three hundred twenty three thousand nine hundred and seventy seven dollars added to the prize pool through that Year’s compendium year after year the compendium has proven to be a huge

Success for the Dota 2 scene as eight of the top 10 prize pools in Esports history are owned by the international while the compendium was a proof of concept for the new monetization model the battle pass really exploded in 2018 with the release of one of the biggest

Games ever fortnite fortnite became a global sensation for the simple fact that it was freedom play all you had to do was hit download and you could start playing almost immediately despite being free to play you could spend money on things like loot boxes and the fortnite

Battle pass which cost ten dollars this battle pass much like the compendium gave access to tons of cosmetics and items as long as you kept playing the game if you manage to finish one season’s battle pass you would unlock the next season’s battle pass incentivizing you to grind until

Completion according to analyst Michael pacter the first day of fortnite season 3 Battle pass saw 5 million battle pass purchases totaling more than 50 million dollars I don’t know about you but making 50 million dollars in one day sounds pretty good to put it lightly pactor said quote that’s a good business

Model I think a lot of Publishers are going to copy that and move to Cosmetics so nobody complains about pay to win almost every multiplayer game from valorant to team fight tactics has a battle pass of some sort unfortunately not all games are sensible as fortnite when it comes to monetizing and many

Battle passes have become a cash grab at the expense of player experience frustrating challenges unreasonable time commitments predatory practices so how did we get here after fortnite proved the model to be a good one why are so many companies squeezing their player base dry first it’s important to acknowledge the big monetization method

That the battle pass replaced loot boxes for the most part the word loot box brings to mind other words like overpriced rigged and straight up gambling as a matter of fact governments around the world started looking at loot boxes as a form of gambling with some like the Belgian government Banning them

Outright the fact that loot boxes were becoming so polarizing was a big reason that the battle pass became so popular so quickly unfortunately as of late developers are finding ways to squeeze players for more and more money a great example of this is League of Legends and

Its event passes it started as a battle pass of sorts with missions that provided reward and the ability to earn special tokens to buy event exclusive items initially the pass had amazing value for even casual players thanks to the variety of ways you could complete missions and how easy it was to farm

Tokens just by playing the game unfortunately Riot began gradually nerfing the pass taking away incentive to play game modes like Aram and reducing the rewards earned through challenges as a whole on top of that Riot made it more difficult for you to earn tokens by basing points earned on

The length of each game the community did the math and realized that the new system provided fewer tokens for more game time especially because points didn’t carry over so even if you played a 40-minute game and only needed a couple of points most of that game time was effectively worthless another prime

Example of developers squeezing their player base is 343 Industries who seriously butchered Halo infinite’s initial battle pass system at 10 for the base battle pass or ten dollars plus a premium fee to instantly earn 25 levels the battle pass seems pretty standard on the surface however the way you progress

Through the battle pass was just not fun for anyone While most battle passes allow you to make progress just by playing the game doesn’t really matter the mode single player multiplayer co-op Halo infinite only allowed you to progress through challenges that were fairly hard to complete in addition

Rewards were few and far between especially in the case of the free battle pass and the rewards just weren’t very good for the premium battle pass it didn’t even award credits to players meaning if you completed the battle pass once you’d have to Shell out more money

Next season to start the process over again in general it felt like the battle pass was tacked on thoughtlessly giving crappy items while forcing players to buy actual good stuff in the store while 343 quickly responded in season 2 by providing more challenges that were a little bit easier to complete and

Frequent rewards for all tiers it still showed that it’s incredibly easy to make a battle pass that’s a chore more than anything else but there was one other key issue with the Halo low infinite battle pass that’s prevalent in most other games they take too long to grind

While the job of a battle pass is to keep a player focused on your game many feel that it has the opposite effect on them instead for the average person with a job and other responsibilities the one or two hours of free time you have each day just doesn’t feel like enough time

To complete a season’s worth of content even while a game like Apex Legends is fairly generous with the number of challenges it offers they typically take quite a while to complete and make the game feel more like a second job than a Leisure activity with how prevalent and

Effective battle passes have been in recent years many game developers feel a growing pressure to adopt the monetization model in order to attract and retain all of their players free time as Rob Fahey an editor for game industry.biz puts it quote there’s going to be inevitable attrition from this

Business model overall and many battle passes will fail simply because they’re going head to head with a rival in a zero-sum competition for players time and attention not just their money ultimately this competition for the Player’s attention ends up contributing to a toxic and stressful work environment in many game companies today

Take fortnite as an example once again when fortnite started to become really really popular there was a huge demand for a constant stream of new content this demand requires a lot of work and things hit a boiling point when a report came out that revealed employees at Epic

Games working 100 hour work weeks so not only were players getting burnt out on Battle passes those implementing them were being worked to the Bone the current free-to-play service model is clearly a good one for making money at least in multiplayer games but what about single player Daniel Joseph of

Manchester Metropolitan University says quote the dominance of the free-to-play model also suggests that large narrative games are going to increasingly be considered an unacceptable risk for the digital games industry to produce it is not that they will disappear but that they will be given less priority and

Resources with time in part because they are not as contingent and less likely to become a series of disguised shops after all game companies are businesses first and foremost and if they are not making money for shareholders what’s the point what this has resulted in is many developers shoehorning battle passes

Into games that really don’t need them a recent example of this is OverWatch in OverWatch 1 players were granted free loot boxes just for playing games while also giving the option for people to spend money on more loot boxes to increase the odds of getting a good skin

While we’ve already talked about the predatory practices of loot boxes in OverWatch 1 there was a pretty good balance where casual players had a chance to earn cosmetics without spending money while whales could roll until they had every skin and emote in the game unfortunately OverWatch 2

Replaced the old loot box system with a new battle pass a change that has been widely criticized by casual players who simply don’t have time to grind for skins instead of receiving free stuff after each game they are expected to grind through a set progression system that heavily favors those without jobs

Or family responsibilities once again the goal is to retain player time and attention not just their money so where do we go from here despite all of the issues listed above it’s likely that battle passes are going to be around for the foreseeable future so

What can we as consumers do to make sure we don’t get sucked in Fahey summarizes the current situation saying quote battle passes are the current meta of the industry’s business model but like all metas this one will pass there are already too many of these things and unlike most forms of monetization

There’s strictly a zero-sum game buying battle passes in multiple games is a time commitment almost nobody can afford and after watching the clock run out on a battle pass that you’ve barely been able to enjoy due to work or personal commitments few players will be willing to make a similar purchase again

That’s not to say all battle passes will disappear as some games have created and maintained a great battle pass system that their respective Community is satisfied with such as fortnite and gentian impact but when every game has a battle pass players are gonna start missing the variety of being able to

Jump from game to game without feeling like they’re being forced into a situation where they’re not allowed to try other titles either way with only so much time available each day the reality is that we’re eventually going to reach a breaking point so the next time your

Favorite game starts a new battle pass season ask yourself if you really need to buy it and whether the content is truly worth it making smart decisions for your wallet and for your personal time will make the gaming experience so much more fun especially when you don’t have to worry

About finding the optimal way to grind through a battle pass what are your thoughts on Battle passes do you like them do you hate them are they a way to make games interesting or a sneaky way to make sure you’re not playing anyone else’s games let us know your thoughts

In the comments below my name is Jonah see you next time this video is made possible thanks to our wonderful patrons massive thank you to everyone on this list and shout out to be Cloud QB foxy keow stick pachana’s shampoo Spartacus and yashichi for being Platinum supporters and an extra special

Shout out to Marco for being our Diamond supporter happy New Year guys here’s to a great 2023. if you want to talk to us check out our Discord if you want to support our Channel and get info on unreleased videos check out our patreon if you want to help us out in a

Different way leaving a like subscribing and hitting the Bell to stay up to date is also appreciated my name is Jonah thanks for watching