I feel pretty much the same way, but apparently, that’s not the norm. The sheer number of people gladly playing and paying into games with montetized systems seems to suggest perhaps that most gamers actually prefer microtransactions to higher up-front costs.
And that if you’re willing to wait a year or two damn near any game can be had for under $5. So for me anyway, they can do whatever the hell they want because my back log of awesome games is like 200 deep, so the chances of me being tempted to spend $60 on a VC-laden pile of crap is approximately 0%.
That’s why studios love sports games. Nobody waits a year, because they want to play the current roster.
I feel like a lot of this is the same reason people buy trivial things on installments and end up paying twice as much as the asking price. People are stupid and don’t think about the actual cost of something over time.
That’s perhaps true with those “twelve easy payments of $33” things, but I’m not sure it’s the same with microtransactions. In the first case, you can get the same item cheaper, elsewhere. For, say, an EA sports game, you can’t. So perhaps it’s more a matter of people having radically different definitions of value.
I love the way he positions the situation as helping people, because otherwise there’d be no choice but to grind, and a lot of people are busy and don’t want to have to spend the time…
…grinding…to get…uniforms and players. As if there was no other way uniforms and players could be provided to players, except forcing them to grind for hours.
Path of Exile (stash tabs) and Warframe. I would argue that both of those games would have come and gone and been completely forgettable without microtransactions. Instead the games have improved and expanded massively and have large fanbases that continue to support the game and the developers years and years later.
That being said, the NBA 2K shit is gross and I kind of want to punch that guy in the face.
The only microtransaction heavy game I played is ME: Andromeda MP. Man that was a stinking pile of money grab shoved right into our face. The vanilla/free classes/weapons are completely underpowered. The premium classes/weapons you will get only after disgustingly long grind or by paying. In the odd chance there is a vanilla class+weapon combo that is effective and therefore subverted the incentive to pay, they quickly nerf that combo. Bioware/EA has only themselves to blame for that microtransaction model that quickly drained goodwill towards the game itself and ME franchise as a whole.
The microtransaction in most Ubisoft games I play is pretty immaterial (pretty much all Ubisoft games in the last 3-4 years). There is an option to pay but there is almost no grind so I am happy to keep playing.
FIFA Ultimate Team is such a cash cow for EA so everybody are trying to create their own microtransaction cash cow. Sometimes what they created is a pig instead, and sometimes no amount of tweaks can change it into a cash cow. A pig with lipstick is still a pig.
To me, it was well before mtx got explicit, but the MMOization of tons of other games- now almost every genre has some kind of RPG progression system to hit that dopamine release and keep you grinding it out, it was only a matter of time before they monetized that more directly.
You don’t think Warframe would be a better game if you paid $60 for it up-front and got all the various warframes and mods and such through normal gameplay?
Same for Path of Exile, you don’t think it would be a better game if you bought the game for $60 and then purchased stash tabs with in-game gold?
This is all separate from whether those games would have been successful in the market with B2P business models. That’s a different question. I’m just talking about the gameplay.
Path of Exile has gotten an absurd amount of content over the years. The reality is that it would have been a $60 game (although it probably would have launched for less than that) + five additional expansions for maybe 10-20 bucks a piece. But here we are with the leagues themselves getting more and more content (the last three leagues have all been expansion-sized in terms of what they offered, in fact), and the game continuing to improve. Although I personally have spent more than 60 +100 bucks on PoE, I think this model has been way better for what PoE does.
I don’t want to buy a stash tab or a skill effect for “in game gold”, whatever that means. If I want one, I just buy it.
I specifically said “This is all separate from whether those games would have been successful in the market with B2P business models. That’s a different question.”
Correct. Because I remember what those games were at release, and while they were complete games, they were pretty forgettable. I really didn’t like either game in its original state, it was only after all the improvements, new features, and additional content that they really became something special (to me) and that doesn’t happen without microtransactions.
Also, I feel like playing both games without spending money is totally plausible. If you consider them $60 games and drop the much money on them once, you’re totally set. That’s basically how I played both (except it was more like $30 or $40 up front) and the only time I’ve given them more money was to support ongoing development, not because I felt like I was being forced into it by skeezy game design.
None of this takes away from the overall point you and others are making, though. In the majority of cases, especially when it comes to the larger publishers, I do feel like gameplay is often made to be poor so you have to pay more to get past the pain points. ME: Andromeda is a good example, as was just mentioned up above. The NBA 2K games have also become similarly grindy as hell unless you pony up, from what I’ve heard. To add insult to injury, these are not even F2P games, they’re sixty bucks! And they offer little to no additional value to the game in terms of ongoing development, they just want it to be a cash cow.
You did ask for examples of games made better due to their microtransactions, though, and in my opinion the two I mentioned definitely fit the bill. I think it shows that MT itself isn’t necessary bad, although in many cases it’s totally misused to the detriment of the game.
I don’t think you can do that, though, they’re as intrinsically linked as shitty developers making a game worse to facilitate MT revenue is.
I personally tend to agree that microtransactions have an adverse effect on gameplay, for the types of things I like to play, but I have to point out again that the market isn’t thinking along the same lines. There are clearly enough people out there for whom this monetization model is fine, and who are willing to play (pay?) along. Would they be happier if they didn’t have to pay all the time? Maybe, but why in hell would a publisher stop a robust revenue stream? They’ve apparently figured out that they make more money out of this than out of a one time sale model. They’re not going to change unless people stop buying their games.
And that isn’t going to happen. One can argue that it’s immoral to vend a product that gets its hooks in so hard that people will buy into (literally) sales models that are punitive, but I can’t get outraged here. Many manufacturers are trying to create revenue streams that outlast the initial purchase. In some ways this is just a variation on the extended warranty thing or paying for continued OnStar type services. Not to mention the predatory pricing of options on luxury cars. Fact is, the market can bear this stuff, and will continue to do so.
Face it, folks. With gaming having become totally mainstream, what the old guard and long-time enthusiasts feel is less and less relevant. The mainstream is perfectly fine with games as diversions integrated into social networks, and is very comfortable with an ongoing transaction model in that context.
Yes, and I ignored that you said it because it had no bearing on what I was saying.
I specifically said I thought PoE was better off doing what it’s currently doing, pointing out that their rate of adding content is increasing. I also wanted to make it clear that if you wanted to think of it in terms of traditional costs, the actual cost wouldn’t just be what was up front (one expansion per year since go-live).
I wasn’t arguing it could still be successful another way (or not). I was arguing that the devs made a deliberate choice to do it one way and not another and that it was working out well for them. Arguably better than the other way.
I did, I did that!
I’m not saying Warframe or Path of Exile are preying on their customers. They are sterling examples of doing F2P microtransactions right. But I would like to get stash tabs without paying up with real money. It would be a better game if that was possible, all else being equal.
Or if they weren’t limited in the first place. . .
It’s like Steam gamifying your friends list size by making you level up on the store. Ugh, I hate that shit.
Say what?
Yup!
You can level up by completing achievements and getting card sets though…
or you could buy stuff.