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An incorherant rant about microtransactions on full priced titles. [Forza 5]

N

NullPointer

Member
alr1ght said:
The game design is inherently compromised once you set up F2P features.
Click to expand...
Yep. At the very minimum it acts as an incentive to add more tolls, more barriers and wait times to the core gameplay, and as a disincentive to remove any of those barriers that may already exist in the title.

Little by little these monetization schemes will destroy these games. More grinds, longer grinds, and even more post-release content you'll be pressured to purchase.
 
K

King_Moc

Banned
Heshinsi said:
Why is gaming the only entertainment medium, where I can't decide how I want to enjoy the product? If I'm feeling bored in a particular chapter in a book, I can just skip ahead. Don't want to sit through the lovey dovey scenes in an action film? Hit the fast forward button. There are games I've paid full price for that I haven't fully played through, because I'm either bored, stuck, or keep dying in a particular spot. I should be able to skip ahead without being penalised, or in most cases, being blocked from doing so in the first place.



Umm, you can still play GT6 like you've always had with any prior GT game. I'm guessing this credit thing is for people that want the expensive cars almost immediately, and don't want to go through the normal progression system. I agree on that they shouldn't be charging for that ability, it should be a cheat in the menu. Balance it by stopping trophy progression or something.
Click to expand...

If you bought the disc, and the content is on there, then being charged extra for it because you weren't willing to jump through exp hoops is utter, utter bullshit. You paid for the game, it should be illegal to do this. They used to have cheat codes for this kind of thing, yet somehow the videogame companies have actually managed to convince some of us that this is somehow 'ok' because, afterall, you don't have to. Well, that slippery slope is starting to get a heck of a lot more slippery.
 
H

Heshinsi

"playing" dumb? unpossible
alr1ght said:
The game design is inherently compromised once you set up F2P features.
Click to expand...

What I mean is keep the $60 system they have now, but let me decide how I want to enjoy the game. For example, I'm playing a Final Fantasy game and I can't for the life of me beat this particular boss. Instead of having me never playing past that part, allow me to go into the menu and select "auto complete boss battle", or SKIP.
 
A

alr1ght

bish gets all the credit :)
Heshinsi said:
What I mean is keep the $60 system they have now, but let me decide how I want to enjoy the game. For example, I'm playing a Final Fantasy game and I can't for the life of me beat this particular boss. Instead of having me never playing past that part, allow me to go into the menu and select "auto complete boss battle", or SKIP.
Click to expand...

That's not what we're talking about. FWIW I think that's fine, as long as they're not charging for it. I think some Nintendo games do that.
 
A

Arcteryx

Member
I'm afraid for the future of games in this genre(hell anything really with "unlocks"). The recent additions to GT6 just sound...bad, especially so if the monetary rewards for races have been reduced.
 
J

Joni

Member
I have no problem with it if you can unlock them without problem. Say instead of playing half an hour you can just buy it, OK. You make it like that for lazy gamers.
 
M

Mugaaz

Member
Heshinsi said:
Why is gaming the only entertainment medium where I can't decide how I want to enjoy the product? If I'm feeling bored in a particular chapter in a book, I can just skip ahead. Don't want to sit through the lovey dovey scenes in an action film? Hit the fast forward button. There are games I've paid full price for that I haven't fully played through, because I'm either bored, stuck, or keep dying in a particular spot. I should be able to skip ahead without being penalised, or in most cases, being blocked from doing so in the first place.
Click to expand...

I think you're taking this past reason. It's basically the same as asking why can I roll 8 dice in Monopoly if I want to? If it's actually a game, there should be ways to win and lose, and you should lose when you play incorrectly. That's the basic premise of a game. If it's just interactive entertainment ala Heavy Rain or something, then fine. If you're getting bored or stuck in a particular spot in a game I don't understand being entitled to move ahead at will, because the underlying problem is either you are on the wrong difficulty, the game is fundamentally flawed, or you died as a result of a mistake and this is the way the game should work. When you apply this to Forza/GT car buy grinding, the problem is fundamental bad design for the purpose of encouraging IAP. They purposelly make it long and tedious to acquire new object to entice a buy. Youre not getting something for playing well, youre getting it for playing a long time and thats it. At this point, the premise of the game is gone and we are now in pure work mode.
 
S

Solal

Member
I don't know Forza much but as regards GT, the Gt mode was already very close to the F2P model in terms of game mechanics. GT doesn't reward talent: it rewards grinding. You can be the worst driver ever: if you are ready to spend hours and hours driving, then you'll get there.

Don't believe me? Then why are professionnal races longer than amateurs? And honestly, they don't feel harder: just longer.

So, our time was already GT's currency... i guess PD just thought it would be clever to monetize your time. "I think we are wasting our money wasting their time for free! Time to waste their money!"

Disgusting to say the least.

Everyone: if you can't resist buying gt6 ( like me) at least buy it second hand!

I even think it diserves a twitter blitz on yosp's and kaz' twitter accounts.
 
E

Eusis

Member
ElectricBanquet said:
This business model isn't going away unless consumers start refusing to buy games that do this... so it isn't going away.
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I actually fear that publishers will want to try to force our hands, so if we ignore them they more aggressively push them. Probably the best way to win is for sales of the core game to diminish with no gain on microtransactions. Or, at an extreme, platform holder or even government intervention. If the latter happens it'll be because of getting too exploitative on mobile and tripping some alarms.

I admittedly don't mind if it's one time purchase for, say, some map or something, at least you're ostensibly working on it still rather than just buying the money or whatever. At some point that raises the question of why even play the game at all.
 
H

human onion

Banned
I agree this is awful for most games, but I actually like the way CS:GO handles microtransactions with its integration with the Steam Market. I've made my money back and more from selling crates in that game. I know I can't use that money anywhere besides Steam, but I already spent the money there anyway.
 
S

SonyToo!™

Member
Eusis said:
I actually fear that publishers will want to try to force our hands, so if we ignore them they more aggressively push them. Probably the best way to win is for sales of the core game to diminish with no gain on microtransactions. Or, at an extreme, platform holder or even government intervention. If the latter happens it'll be because of getting too exploitative on mobile and tripping some alarms.
Click to expand...

Is there anything happening in regards to in app purchases like smurfberries exploiting children? The UK govt was supposed to be looking into it, it wouldn't surprise me if other EU countries are doing the same.
 
R

Royal Moon

Neo Member
Ugh. The scummiest of micro-transactions are when publishers shoehorn them into games after their initial release. GTA: Online is a prime example of this type of bullshit.
 
S

SatelliteOfLove

Member
Humenkind said:
I agree this is awful for most games, but I actually like the way CS:GO handles microtransactions with its integration with the Steam Market. I've made my money back and more from selling crates in that game. I know I can't use that money anywhere besides Steam, but I already spent the money there anyway.
Click to expand...

That's Valve being way ahead of the empty, greedy heads of other publishers, though. Again. With style. Often on free titles.
 
P

PG2G

Member
The career mode in these types of games is built on "grinding", that's the whole point. They want people to play the career as intended so they created a financial barrier to minimize the number of people that skip it.

It is kind of like a game offering a micro transaction at the beginning to watch the ending of the game immediately. The game mechanics haven't necessarily changed as a result, but people that are crazy or choose not to complete the game can watch the ending. You could say just enable it for everyone, but if you don't want someone to do something you put up a barrier
 
N

NullPointer

Member
PG2G said:
The career mode in these types of games is built on "grinding", that's the whole point. They want people to play the career as intended so they created a financial barrier to minimize the number of people that skip it.
Click to expand...
They have a financial incentives to erecting these barriers now. It'll only get worse.

Its not about challenge, its about tedium and needless repetition to accrue money while being offered various upsells. Always the upsell. No matter how much you spend.

Get the super limited collector's edition, and get the jacket and keychain and whatever else. Spend hundreds upon hundreds on the game. Get the new wheel and peripherals. And even then you'll still get upsells.

It never ends.
 
E

Eusis

Member
TrevHead said:
Is there anything happening in regards to in app purchases like smurfberries exploiting children? The UK govt was supposed to be looking into it, it wouldn't surprise me if other EU countries are doing the same.
Click to expand...
I think the more blatantly gambling-esque microtransactions for Japanese mobile got shot down, though they worked around that apparently.

If something happens it's probably going to be slow moving, a few years of this gradually getting worse, then some people push for bills and THOSE take awhile. They didn't exactly run to outlaw violent games in the US for example, just have a hearing and basically scold the industry into shaping up or they'll do it for them. I'm pessimistic on the government of at least the US actually making efforts to restrict business at all right now, though even a few significant European countries putting the foot down could well curtail it, or so I'd hope.
 
P

PG2G

Member
NullPointer said:
They have a financial incentives to erecting these barriers now. It'll only get worse.

Its not about challenge, its about tedium and needless repetition to accrue money while MS offers you an upsell. Always the upsell. No matter how much you spend.
Click to expand...

Racing in a racing game is tedium and needless? It is playing the game...

I could understand more if you were being forced into doing races you didn't want to do (like pick up trucks or some shit), but come on lol
 
J

Johnson81

Neo Member
The only way to stop this shit is to completely avoid in buying any in game purchases. The problem is, the informed gamer knows that this is a ploy by the publisher to generate additional revenue and will probably avoid it. The masses on the other hand must be eating this shit up, just look at Ultimate Team on Fifa. It's worrying that this info has only really come out this week, the week it happens to be out.

The question now is if these games been altered from their original form to increase grinding to encourage/tempt gamers into buying in-app purchases. This is why I've probably spent only £10 on DLC this generation, it's hardly been worth it and just seems like a cash grab.
 
B

Bisonian

Member
Heshinsi said:
What I mean is keep the $60 system they have now, but let me decide how I want to enjoy the game. For example, I'm playing a Final Fantasy game and I can't for the life of me beat this particular boss. Instead of having me never playing past that part, allow me to go into the menu and select "auto complete boss battle", or SKIP.
Click to expand...

This is all well and good, but what stops them from putting this in the game and then taking every boss' hit points and multiplying them by 2? Maybe they make that boss hit twice as hard. How would you ever know?

There are plenty of cases on the mobile side where developers are flat out destroying their balance in an attempt to drive people to these very microtransactions. It's a slippery slope I rather not see console games slide down.
 
F

flyinpiranha

Member
Johnson81 said:
The only way to stop this shit is to completely avoid in buying any in game purchases. The problem is, the informed gamer knows that this is a ploy by the publisher to generate additional revenue and will probably avoid it. The masses on the other hand must be eating this shit up, just look at Ultimate Team on Fifa. It's worrying that this info has only really come out this week, the week it happens to be out.

The question now is if these games been altered from their original form to increase grinding to encourage/tempt gamers into buying in-app purchases. This is why I've probably spent only £10 on DLC this generation, it's hardly been worth it and just seems like a cash grab.
Click to expand...

This has been known for a while with Forza 5, I mean ... it was in Forza 4 too. I don't remember 3 all that much.

Shit, this was the BASIS for game design in arcades. All those 80's and 90's arcade machines were created to take your quarters/nickels.

This is classic gaming! Pay2Win is retro!
 
P

Psycho_Mantis

Banned
As long as they don't specifically change the game economy then I am okay with this. For instance in GT5 to get a P4 and Mark 4 race car was notoriously hard and even after the duping fiasco it was still rare online. Its sad to see rare cars disappear as people will just pay for it but as long the game is not made deliberately to make you grind a long long time then it should be okay.

GT5's highest pay for a race after patches is a 100k iirc and its a difficult race (lasts 5-7 mins) . Top cars cost 20 million so its a big grind. If GT6 has the top pay out of 100k and top cars cost 50 million (exaggerating) then its obvious the model was changed to coerce people into playing. In fact grinding for 20 million was massive grind and its the most I will be willing to do. Good thing the Ferrari P4 was worth it :)
 
D

Damaniel

Banned
PG2G said:
Racing in a racing game is tedium and needless? It is playing the game...

I could understand more if you were being forced into doing races you didn't want to do (like pick up trucks or some shit), but come on lol
Click to expand...

It's tedium when what could be done with 1 hour of racing now takes 10 hours. Sure, Forza isn't that much of a grind, but excessively long grinds like this are staples of the mobile and F2P MMO markets. Even the most fun game in the world is going to become tedious when getting even the most trivial new thing takes far, far longer than it used to.

If a company puts in some mechanism to pay money that speeds up some aspect of the game, it is in their best financial interest to make that aspect of the game as slow as they can get away with (to make the pain of paying money hurt less than the pain of the grind). Sure, there are some (dedicated) cheapskates out there that will grind 100 hours to get an item you can buy for a couple bucks, but the developer is gambling that there's a large minority of gamers who won't. The mobile and MMO markets are demonstrating that those developers are right.

Personally, I don't like the idea of playing a game that's artificially adding pain, and then offering the ability for me to pay to get rid of the pain. I'm surprised that anybody can defend it with a straight face.
 
N

NullPointer

Member
PG2G said:
Racing in a racing game is tedium and needless? It is playing the game...

I could understand more if you were being forced into doing races you didn't want to do (like pick up trucks or some shit), but come on lol
Click to expand...
Well that's how I mean it. If you find yourself repeating the same events purely to grind for more money, than yes, that's not about how you want to play the game, or the challenge, its about unlocking the ability to play the game the way you want to.

Pyscho_Mantis said:
As long as they don't specifically change the game economy then I am okay with this.
Click to expand...
Am I right that you no longer level up and get free cars in Forza 5? If so, the economy has already been changed.
 
E

Eusis

Member
flyinpiranha said:
Shit, this was the BASIS for game design in arcades. All those 80's and 90's arcade machines were created to take your quarters/nickels.

This is classic gaming! Pay2Win is retro!
Click to expand...
The fact those game types generally died out gives some hope for the future at least. Failing that, well, hopefully indies come through at least, part of why I like the PS4 being as open and friendly to them as possible as it'd still potentially come through there if AAA completely collapses in on itself.
 
P

PG2G

Member
I will agree that it is a slippery slope, but I don't see anything that suggests that the career mode has been negatively impacted by the presence of micro transactions.

Its impossible to tell until we get the game in our hands and play it.
 
R

RooMHM

Member
This appears to have become the replacement to the online pass
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No? I ve always seen online passes as an all-included DLC. So it was DLC + online passes. Double the crap.

I don t understand the thread title. Incoherant? I d say perfectly reasonable !
 
IISANDERII

IISANDERII

Member
U-R said:
I have nothing against companies forcing microtransactions: they are in the business of making money out of naive gamers, and I'm in the business of not buying exploitative products. We compliment each other well.

What irks me, instead, are both the game designers in denial that their job regressed into engineering exploitative tricks out of classic design templates (Gamasutra has really a collection of those) and gamers who defend their practices ("I can grind everything for free and you should have no life too", and "I paid to win, therefore the game is not pay to win", take the cake for the worst in-denial excuses). And even in this case, it's not the people or their preferences and self delusions, but the fact their denial is reshaping gaming in the worst possible way for my tastes.

Jonathan Blow did a very great talk about how some game design elements cannot survive microtransactions, it was probably already posted but I'll link it here just in case.
Click to expand...
Very interesting, thanks for posting.
 
K

kyser73

Member
Eusis said:
The fact those game types generally died out gives some hope for the future at least. Failing that, well, hopefully indies come through at least, part of why I like the PS4 being as open and friendly to them as possible as it'd still potentially come through there if AAA completely collapses in on itself.
Click to expand...

They died out(relatively) because consoles & home PCs got powerful enough to give you an arcade-level graphic/sonic experience in the home for a one-off fee. On the dev side until the studio business model changes dramatically or there's a change in development tool kits that lead to lower development costs & the associated non-dev costs like marketing, HR and the other costs of running a business.

Make no mistake - this is an industry, and one where the officers of the big publicly traded companies can be sued by shareholders for failing to maximise profits. They are legally obliged to behave this way.
 
K

kurbaan

Banned
Heshinsi said:
What I mean is keep the $60 system they have now, but let me decide how I want to enjoy the game. For example, I'm playing a Final Fantasy game and I can't for the life of me beat this particular boss. Instead of having me never playing past that part, allow me to go into the menu and select "auto complete boss battle", or SKIP.
Click to expand...

Yes but what we are talking about here is pay 4.99 to enable "Skip"
 
S

SatelliteOfLove

Member
PG2G said:
Racing in a racing game is tedium and needless? It is playing the game...

I could understand more if you were being forced into doing races you didn't want to do (like pick up trucks or some shit), but come on lol
Click to expand...

It's not being marketed to you, and if it gets worse, more games won't be built for you, either. Hence the slippery slope.

Eusis said:
The fact those game types generally died out gives some hope for the future at least. Failing that, well, hopefully indies come through at least, part of why I like the PS4 being as open and friendly to them as possible as it'd still potentially come through there if AAA completely collapses in on itself.
Click to expand...

And that was from a natural restriction, not an artificial one. It's like "the road is twisty and turny because mountains" rather than "We made the road twisty and turny because we own the gas stations on it." that categorizes this issue.

And again, due to more 'straight roads" during Gen 7, the inclination to pay to avoid twisty-turny parts becomes more common...
 
Xenon

Xenon

Member
BakedSardine said:
I think it's reasonable of gamers to not accept $60 games launching with $50 of DLC out of the gate.
Click to expand...

It's made even worse by the fact that it everyone says it's light on content compared to previous games. I understand the game is rushed for release but WTF at taking some of the completed content that could have been included to make up for the games shortcomings and trying to sell it to me.

Anyone who buys anything from Forza 5's DLC deserves to get ripped off.
 
P

PierrePressure

Neo Member
The very idea of these microtransactions does not sit well with me and I imagine most developers too. It sours the very idea of gaming being about fun and games made by gamers for gamers.

I'm not stupid and understand it's just business but does it have to be so bloody obvious?
 
D

Damaniel

Banned
SatelliteOfLove said:
And that was from a natural restriction, not an artificial one. It's like "the road is twisty and turny because mountains" rather than "We made the road twisty and turny because we own the gas stations on it." that categorizes this issue.

And again, due to more 'straight roads" during Gen 7, the inclination to pay to avoid twisty-turny parts becomes more common...
Click to expand...

But you can push your car between stations if you don't want to pay, so it's totally alright!
;)
 
R

rav

Member
If the grind sucks, I'll just stop playing it. Then I'll proceed to tell everyone you have to pay extra money on top of buying the game just to complete the game.

If I weren't getting a sweet deal on this game, I'd be pretty upset.
 
sol_bad

sol_bad

Member
Why are game developers doing this, I don't understand.
:eek:(

They either keep the grind/RPG elements intact or they have everything unlocked from the get go. Choose one and stick to your guns.
Was it the stupid CoD series that started the whole "unlock everything" in multiplayer scheme or was it happening long before?
 
T

Tabris

Member
I don't mind the micro transactions, but I really hate them creating grinding situations that pushes gamers to buy micro transactions.

It's shady fucking business.
 
M

mclem

Member
Heshinsi said:
Why is gaming the only entertainment medium where I can't decide how I want to enjoy the product?
Click to expand...

I'd say: Because gaming is the only entertainment medium which is defined by the limitations on its use. At least, I'm struggling to think of another one which actively *tests* you before it drip-feeds the next section of content
 
M

mclem

Member
Heshinsi said:
What I mean is keep the $60 system they have now, but let me decide how I want to enjoy the game. For example, I'm playing a Final Fantasy game and I can't for the life of me beat this particular boss. Instead of having me never playing past that part, allow me to go into the menu and select "auto complete boss battle", or SKIP.
Click to expand...
Didn't someone - I'm thinking Jennifer Hepler, but I could be wrong - get chastised for suggesting something very similar to that?
 
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