There’s is no need for the microtransactions in the first place.
They don’t help you at all other than the first dozen hours, and the way they would help you will ruin your game curve.
The game isn’t designed around you having a portcrystal day one.
Edit: The game is a power fantasy. The whole point is you start out weak as shit where three goblins own you and you grow to the point you are using a half dozen weapons you’ve become a master in to kill dragons in seconds.
Buying more power at the beginning of that curve ruins the entire point of the game. This was CAPCOM execs saying “you need to put microtransactions in the game” and then the devs going “ok, how about this piece of junk over here players will have stacks of by endgame that could be a microtransaction.” And then the CAPCOM exec signing off who didn’t even play the game going “great, this will make shareholders happy.”
The only thing that’s useful is the portcrystal, and you will max out the number you can even use in a NG+ playthrough.
TLDR: Don’t buy the mtx and don’t use the mods either. These aren’t supposed to be part of your power curve in the game and were an afterthought that ruins the design if used.
But crucially a terrible idea independent of the actual game design, unlike things such as Assassin’s Creed where it takes twice as long to level as it should because it was paced around buying XP boosts in a single player game.
In this case, it’s a terrible idea that would make the gameplay worse if bought, not a terrible idea that makes the gameplay worse unless bought.
It’s not that big of a difference because if people still purchase it but don’t purchase the microtransactions as you suggest, the message sent to the studio is: “People don’t mind microtransactions in games, we just need to tweak them to make them more desirable” ie. more necessary in the next game they release.
At which point the games sell worse, review worse, and the franchise effectively dies off as the publisher scrambles to reboot it (as with Ubisoft).
Your argument is somewhere in between a slippery slope and strawman.
This game right here and now is a game that isn’t designed around the mtx and so buying it or modding it in is a stupid idea for people to do, whereas a game built around mtx is going to be less enjoyable unless you buy it or mod it in.
When one day you have a future CAPCOM open world RPG designed with the mtx in mind, then you’ll have a point.
I’m not against the idea of MTX, I think there’s a place for them. For instance I don’t mind if a game sells deluxe edition upgrade as a MTX because that’s ultimately pro-consumer. Without that option you’re either going to have to bite the bullet and hope you enjoy the game or pay extra to get the same game twice if you do enjoy it enough. I know I used that option with BG3.
That said, selling in game resources as MTX is fucking stupid. It’s just fundamentally incompatible with good games. If the resources are abundant there’s no reason to sell them as MTX. If they’re scarce then they’re either deliberately scarce for the purpose of selling the MTX which is just scummy, or they’re scarce for some other reason (like if you don’t want to make fast traveling everywhere easily accessible) then selling that resource as MTX just undermines the purpose of the scarcity.
I spent a few minutes analyzing this sentence alone. Admittedly I read the rest of your argument and respect your opinion. It’s just that this is stuck in my head.
Buying the deluxe edition through a micro-transaction? My mind wants to classify this as an oxymoron. Admittedly a lot of microtransactions aren’t really micro by any stretch of the imagination but this just stands out.
Pretty sure he means a deluxe edition upgrade as a mtx.
Where some games allow you to get the base game, try it out and upgrade if you want. Rather than diving in at the deep end and not knowing if you’ll enjoy the game.
Oh 100% that’s what they meant. It’s just something that caught my attention as it almost appears to be an oxymoron.
In practice, “microtransaction” can mean many things. A small price, a purchase of non-unique content, or even a small quantity of unique (non-base) content. So yes, upgrading to the “deluxe” edition can fall under that description. But calling the “deluxe” content upgrade a “micro-transaction” almost appears contradictory. So I had a little chuckle while pondering this before becoming upset at how broad (and expensive) said “micro”transactions have become.
You’re right that it is weird. It’s because we use MTX and DLC almost synonymously and that’s because there’s a lot of overlap. They’re overloads terms and we need a better vocabulary to talk about the specifics. For instance I think if Dragons dogma didn’t sell resources and sold only the deluxe edition parts then there wouldn’t be that big of an outrage about MTX. The outrage is about the in game resources being sold, but it’s hard to present it that way when the only word we have for it is MTX, which also contains the part that is not the issue.
So you’d much rather pay $60 for helldivers 2 than $40? Because that’s the monetary difference between standard and deluxe.
Deluxe editions are generally for people who want extra fluff in their game. Not everyone wants the fluff and they shouldn’t pay for things they don’t want. Your idea “makes sense” only if you assume they’re going to give away deluxe stuff for free and the final price of the product doesn’t increase, which frankly is just naive thinking.
I could get the game for free, the mtx for free, and could want to play it, and would still never do it, because of how stupid this is. Sorry studio artists, your work is forever tainted for the choices of your owners. It will never shine through their dense immoral greed of your masters.
Why? Like, I generally draw a pretty hard line with predatory games, but this just seems pointless. There’s nothing you can get from the MTX that you can’t easily get through normal gameplay. It’s admittedly a trap for the ignorant, but a pretty pointless one.
It shows that the devs are willing to take advantage of the less keen eyed or a person in a rush. That is downright predatory and evil. Practically a scam.
You might be fine with giving your money to people like that, some people aren’t.
So what games have you played in the last decade? This is the industry, you might as well complain about predatory concession prices at movie theaters. Is it shitty? Sure. But it’s a trap for the ignorant, and frankly I can only go so far to try to protect people from throwing away their money on stupid things.
It encourages big publishers to make developers put in game mechanics that are slightly more tedious so you pay to skip. So like mobile games just bot as obviously shitty. I dread when they come after my favourite franchises one after one. It makes the goal not to have a good game but to have a game optimized for spending money, it shifts priorities in a bad direction.
It can, but definitely doesn’t in this case. The systems in question in DD2 are identical to the first game. There’s nothing in the game at all that encourages you to spend money or alerts you that you can. Frankly I wouldn’t have even known these micro transactions existed if there wasn’t so much online drama about it.
The rarity of ferrystones is I think a product of their attempt at mtx. I know you can buy them for 10k each and then spam the inn until they replenish, but for a long time that’s kind of a lot of money. I’m level 43 and haven’t really found a solid way to make money “quickly” that isn’t just “do story quests” or “grind out mobs for maybe 500g every 2 mobs.”
The difficulty of getting ferrystones is by design, no different than the previous game. If you fast travel everywhere you’re missing out on a lot of the events in the world. They’re handy to use in certain situations, but there are other options to get around.
You’re just denying yourself a really fun experience. The game is actually really good especially if you’re able to download it without paying if the whole morality thing is what’s stopping you. If it’s available I’d get it.
I won’t stand for it, it’s just not worth it. There’s other fun games that don’t associate with mafia scum. I dislike how they steal money and consecutively contribute negatively to humanity
I dislike how they steal money and consecutively contribute negatively to humanity
Steal money, I’m assuming in this case, is sell a product. They aren’t forcing anyone to buy it, but it is scummy as hell. That’s capitalism for you.
Contribute negatively to humanity, I’m not sure what that means. If it means exploiting people, that’s capitalism!
There are no non-indie studios not participating in this. It sucks, but the goal (in capitalism) is to maximize profits. They are attempting to milk customers as much as they can for this purpose. This game isn’t even particularly bad about it. Modern gaming all is like this and it’s aweful, but it is what it is. You can participate in this game or not, but this one game isn’t the only place this is happening. It’s happening literally everywhere, like egg prices going up due to “supply shortages” and never going back to normal. That’s capitalism.
They literally steal money. That’s your problem, you think they are following your rules and swallow that they are engaged in conduct that is okay without scrutinising it in the least because it would be a real hassle and you know nobody would deal with it anyway. Because this is the only way to make a difference. I am a game developer, I know the industry, the bastards in these mafia cells are straight up stealing. Nobody creative has any choice. Nobody has a fucking supply shortage. Creatives are being abused, I want to only participate when I can be assured these insane practices are not involved. It’s not capitalism it’s pure greedy crime
That’s your problem, you think they are following your rules and swallow that they are engaged in conduct that is okay without scrutinising it in the least because it would be a real hassle and you know nobody would deal with it anyway.
Please, read my comment again. I scrutinized it. It’s just that it’s fucking everywhere. This game is getting a ton of shit for it and it isn’t even a very bad offender. It sucks, but this isn’t the game that deserves the hate. At least it’s not loot boxes or other gambling mechanics. Also, it’s not theft. It’s manipulative, but it’s not “literally stealing”.
I want to only participate when I can be assured these insane practices are not involved.
This will never happen. If they’re incentivized to do scummy things to make more profit, you can almost be assured they’ll do it. Regardless, you can never be sure it’s not happening. Remember how we hear about sexual abuse occasionally and it turns out it’s been happening for decades? Yeah, now think about how often they’re doing things that aren’t technically illegal that we don’t hear about.
It’s not capitalism it’s pure greedy crime
If greedy crime is profitable, that’s capitalism incentivizing it. The goal of capitalism is to maximize profits. That goal does not align with what we should want it to. We should prioritize happiness, good, creativity, or almost anything else. That’s not the system we’re in though.
This is my philosophy with things. If something can be bought with real money in a single player game I’ve already paid for, I have no problems using mods or cheats to get the same things.
I got Breath of the Wild on release and I paid for the DLC years later. Gotta say I’m happy with it. There is a correct way to experience Hyrule, and it’s on a motorcycle. No notes.
And I’d say they are even worse in multiplayer games. MTX that affect how the game is played is just paying someone to make it easier for you to win, which is pathetic whether it’s a single player or multiplayer game.
I would probably recommend not using these mods, or at least limiting their usage. The MTX subverted the design intent of the game. These could potentially make the game worse.
(I haven’t played the game and can’t tell you if the game was designed worse for MTX, but everything I’ve seen and read indicates that it wasn’t and those were forced in as an afterthought.)
There are no power ups in DD2, just mostly minor conveniences.
Nothing against the mod creator, this just seems kinda pointless? Like, everything is already available in game. Unless you just want to remake your character a dozen times I can’t see any reason to take the time to download it.
I mean, I certainly haven’t noticed that. Even if you don’t like your character, you can still easily buy the item in game. I’ve only been playing about 5 hours and can easily afford to change my character appearance 5 times over.
I know because I played Dark Arisen, the point is that it’s made to trick uninformed people, we shouldn’t have to keep our guard up even on a full priced game.
You’re a consumer in a capitalist society, you should absolutely have you guard up every single time you pull out your wallet. Why is this specific game any different?
Well, I respect the consistency. I’m just glad they reeled it back after the shit with MH World. Having the character edit only available via outside purchase was fucked up, I was livid about that. It’s just hard for me to get worked up about this in comparison.
I might know why Capcom tried to start a war on mods a month or so ago...
I still want to play DG2, but I can afford to wait until it costs a value I think it's worth. It's not like there's a shortage of games to play or anything.
No, this has always been Capcom’s mode of operation. Unnecessary micro transactions were in the first DD 12 years ago. Look at their other games as well, bullshit tokens to change the appearance of your character in Monster Hunter Rise, etc pp.
There was never any need. All the micro transactions were just time skips for the dumb. The systems are the same dragons dogma systems they had in the first one. They didn’t artificially change things to be grinder. They just put in paid for cheats.
If you want to use them, that’s fine, and certainly, this over paying for it. But people framing this as a need is bad. Which is expected of eurogamers headlines the past few years.
I think the biggest misconception is that there is some mtx shop where you can buy game items. The steam store page for the game has some items in the dlc section that were available in the deluxe edition. 5 wakestones, 1 port stone, etc. It isn’t an unlimited amount to purchase. It’s essentially “did you decide not to buy the deluxe edition but regret it now for some reason? well here are the items included in the deluxe edition that you didn’t get.” There’s no buy all the fast travel i want scenario. It’s maddening to keep seeing this line because it’s clear to anyone who’s actually played the game.
Nobody has ever claimed you need them to finish the game.
The frequently spoken rule of thumb for micro-transactions being “not a big deal” is that they should be cosmetic only if the base game isn’t free.
This game’s micro-transactions are gameplay modifying items and in-game currency packs. That’s a violation of the rule of thumb, so lots of us are saying it’s a big deal.
I don’t want this normalized. Because if it becomes the norm then full pay to win is much easier to normalize.
But even without that fear, it’s absolutely just gross on its own.
They deserve all of the negative reviews and press they’re getting for it.
MTX are bad in general but these MTX look identical to what they’ve put into recent games like RE4 Remake and DMC5. Mechanically it is all items such as Red Orbs in DMC5.
I wasn’t even aware that there were MTX in DMC when I was playing it. Have they made the option more prominent in this game? Or is there just more outrage about this game because it has had a rocky launch and gamers smell weakness?
This game has some designs (that were also in the first) which are rather annoying but opinionated.
The purchasable items lessen the impact of those annoying designs.
An example is one dev saying fast travel in games is bad so they want to make travel fun, and as a result you have to backtrack through areas full of enemies a lot to get places. There are in-game beacons that are given to the player to place to allow them to fast travel, and you can only have four of them. One of the MTX is a fifth one.
It’s more impactful than just a premium currency but you can work around the annoying design choices without paying extra.
I personally find both to be disgusting and exploitative dark patterns especially in a paid single player game, but I feel that paying to work around game design decisions is a step further then is usually in these games.
From what I understand mods have already been produced which provide the items in question for free.
Have to agree that it is shady that right after Capcom went to war with mods they are introducing some kind of item scarcity! I need to play the game before commenting more because I don’t know to what extent they have made playing without these items a chore.
That ship sailed over a decade ago. You can look at the current gaming landscape and pretend this isn’t already normalized. Compared to most AAA game releases, this is a step in the right direction.
A step in the right direction would be no pointless MTX, as plenty of other games are doing right now. There are no microtransactions in my copy of Days Gone, for example. Nor are there any in Horizon: Zero Dawn.
And even if it's the popular thing to do, that is not an excuse to let them get an inch. "Oh, but he only beat you a little!"...
You can frame this as I don’t like non cosmetic microtransactions if you like. But you have to agree that isn’t what 99% of the online discourse is doing. Almost everyone is making statements that are not true because they want to feel outraged and want others to feel outraged, and because they have been lied to by another person’s outrage.
It’s a hurricane of lies, and it’s honestly been worse on lemmy than on reddit.
I have seen lots of “it’s not that bad get over it” kind of posts but none with any convincing reason why we should accept dark patterns like this in games.
If someone is telling lies they should be called out for it, but in matter-of-fact way to avoid pointless drama, while providing sources for the truth.
This is a slippery slope fallacy. Adding paid for cheats in single player games doesn’t make pay to win more normalised if you have a sense of a moral limit. My limit is when game design is changed to account for microtransations. Shadow of Morder was horrible because the game was almost unplayable without it’s boosters. Dragons Dogma is the same game.
If Elden Ring came out and had boosters I’d feel the same way. I’d ignore them and feel weird about people who used them. But it literally doesn’t effect the game for me or my experience if they existed or didn’t
Tell that to the horse armor lol back in the day no one would buy a game with these kind of MTX and we would laugh at it. But now we’re saying “it’s not that bad come on, it’s still a good game”. The slippery slope is very much a thing.
No one was saying “no one would buy a game with these kinds of MTX” Skyrim was already out and wildly successful at that point and secondly the Skyrim horse Armor criticisms were amount Bethesda adding paid mods to get cuts of all mods which is a hugely different situation. When Diablo IV and Street Fighter created extremely overpriced costumes we laugh at them because it’s stupid to assume anyone is going to buy them
Oh, my dear, sweet summer child, they’re not talking about Skyrim. When people say “horse armour” they’re talking about one thing:
In the year of our lord 2006, when Skyrim was still half a decade away. the Xbox 360 release of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion had a $2.50 “DLC” for two sets of horse armour, and it was roundly mocked for it. It wasn’t the first microtransaction, but it was certainly the first one that set everyone talking about its absurdity. The conversation was absolutely about charging money for cosmetics. In fact the general tone was, perhaps ironically, the opposite of today’s prevailing zeitgeist; this was a time when people were accustomed to spending $10-20 for a sizable “expansion pack” or “content disc”, and the idea of dropping $2.50 for horse armour that didn’t even do anything was absolutely ludicrous.
While it is possible that a company like Capcom, driven to increase its profit margin, and having normalized pay-to-win-through-convenience-features in this game would choose to not do more pay-to-win options with deeper gameplay impacts in a future game.
Being vocal about hating this game’s micro-transactions, especially with the reviews going so negative, is one of the only ways we can communicate that we don’t want either.
In order for an argument to be a slippery slope argument it needs to require that step one leads to step two.
My argument wasn’t even a slippery slope argument and is therefore not the slippery slope fallacy.
My claim was that normalizing this type of pay-to-win-light game design makes it easier for them to normalize pay-to-win-full game design. It did not claim that normalizing this will lead to normalizing that.
I don’t want either in my games.
If we push back against this now it should make them think twice about considering full pay-to-win single player non-free games, because it could have a much bigger backlash. Which is what I was saying.
imo, even cosmetic micro-transaction stuff is disgusting. In single player its absolutely intolerable and in multiplayer its at the edge. Not only it makes creating almost non-existent content more profitable, likely at the expense of worthwhile content because any development costs money. Why make the game better when you can create more cosmetics. I’m not saying creating cosmetics is trivial, but making new skin vs creating actually new content are on completely different scales, especially when those new skins are sometimes just recolouring old ones.
Not having access to cosmetic stuff without paying extra also often detracts from the game for me. As example, in game v-rising there are some cosmetics packs for different skins for your castle’s furniture. While you can furnish the place decently with stuff you get, you can be much more creative if you have access to the alternative skins.
If they were all part of some larger expansion pack with something more than just skins, I could accept it but if i have to buy every theme pack separately, I’m not going to do that. I would have much less money available if i had to buy every damn dlc to every game I play. I’d say building and decorating your castle is 50% of the game, less if you don’t care about how your castle looks at all. Not buying these dlc make the game less enjoyable for me.
I just finished the “normal” ending a few hours ago. I fast travelled like, 4-5 times? placed down two portcrystals, never used?
I admittedly kinda sped through just to get an idea of the game, and plan to restart hopefully after a PC upgrade and some performance patches, but fast travel really is just not something you really need. The main quest is pretty clever about providing easy ways to keep you moving along, and most quests are pretty localized into an area.
if we just comply and accept all this shit, next step will be ramping up the things that make people want to buy these stupid microtransactions. In context of dragons dogma examples could be making rift crystal gain so awful you have to grind for them, making class changes cost rift crystals, making more items that you can only get with real money.
And most of all, this is SINGLE PLAYER, if someone isnt disgusted by these kinds of microtransactions in this game on principle, I dont even know anymore what to say.
But as silverlining for all this shit, at least greedy executives will see making games more challenging as profitable thing to do. Though unfortunately it will likely also mean challenge will come from having to do a lot of unfun stuff to get anywhere vs pay money so you dont have to because people who make these decisions only care about money and people will give it to them and defend them for it no matter what.
Just so you know, the scheme was worse and far more agressive in RE4. You could pay2win.
This is not a slippery slope, you’re already at the bottom. We’ve been sliding for years if your analogy is to be followed.
Edit: Actually, to be completely accurate with the analogy, it’s more like we’ve already reached the bottom and are actually coming back up the hill away from it.
Add comment