| @Syrette but they are a false economy in most cases. People buy them because a game is too tough or long. Then they do it again, then they see the trick and don't bother. |
Are microtransactions, day one DLC packages and day one patches etc really that 'evil'? • Page 2
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RobTheBuilder 6,976 posts
Seen 7 hours ago
Registered 13 years ago -
spamdangled 31,584 posts
Seen 1 hour ago
Registered 9 years agoSyrette wrote:
But it's not DLC is it? That implies the content isn't already on the disc.
You're not wrong really, pre-order exclusives annoy me too even if said DLC eventually becomes available to all.
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andytheadequate 8,980 posts
Seen 1 week ago
Registered 7 years agoDay 1 patches for multiplayer games are fine as you need to be connected to the internet anyway. Day 1 patches for single player games is a sign that they released the game in a buggy state then used the time between it going gold and release to hope they fix everything.
Day 1 dlc is usually shit and not worth bothering about. Micro transactions have the potential to be game ruining but in most cases you won't even notice them as they're irrelevant. -
Day 1 DLC... Hmm, yes and no. It depends what value it adds to the game and whether it's something that feels like part of the coherent whole or something that just gilds the lily and can be forgotten about without impacting the main game.
Day 1 patches are just a lazy way of giving a developer extra time to fix bugs to meet a release date. They're generally avoidable and whilst it doesn't annoy me in the day of ADSL it's just very sloppy and, dare I say it, unprofessional.
Micro transactions don't generally bother me so long as they don't harass me at every turn or actually stop me playing a game because I have to buy something. I'm prepared to forgive them in f2p as the developer's only source of income but in full price titles it's gouging for gouging's sake and can get the fuck out. -
sanctusmortis 9,914 posts
Seen 3 days ago
Registered 12 years agoLong version of my rather curt original reply:
Microtransactions are fine - in F2P. In indie games, they're tolerable as a way to generate further income for developers. In full price games, they are an abomination.
Day one DLC is fine - if it's free to people who bought the game new, or utterly non-essential (see: DS3 suits, which are cosmetic). If it adds something important (see ME3's infamous day one DLC which changes the game a lot) it is again abhorrent.
Day one patches are a symptom of the fact that games now come out broken. This isn't so much an evil as it is a sign that the industry no longer has the money to take the time to get things right, and testing's nigh pointless as devs just go gold anyhow. Read Tales of the Trenches for a good insight into modern games QA. -
WinterSnowblind 1,265 posts
Seen 6 hours ago
Registered 10 years agoYes. They can be done right, but too many developers are clearly cutting content out of games or otherwise locking off content that would have typically been available in the base game as standard in the past.
Best way to deal with it is to simply say no. There wouldn't be so much of a problem, if all the people complaining about it would actually stick to their guns and stop supporting this crap. -
meme wrote:
Although they are high score games, and your score is limited by how many bits of trickery you have available to you. Temple Run requires coins to buy the things to help you get a high score, one microtransaction doubles the coin rate and is possibly the best thing you can buy. So in essence, it becomes a test of endurance to pool together enough resource to have a bash at a high score.
RobTheBuilder wrote:
Not inherently. There are dozens of mobile games with microtransactions that are perfectly playable without spending a penny. Endless Runners are a good example here - in ones like Jetpack Joyride or Temple Run you progress in the game by playing the game. You can pay to skip that progress (or to make it easier), but at no point are you prevented from playing as normal, at no point does it inherently funnel you towards "you must pay to get past this specific point".
Micro-transactions - Yes. They force game design to be around making money not playing well. -
SomaticSense 15,110 posts
Seen 1 week ago
Registered 12 years agoI've not really got a problem with day 1 DLC, as long as a) it wasn't cut from the game to sell later, and b) it isn't an 'unlock key' for content already on the disc.
I bought SFxTekken in the Xbox GoD demand sale the other day, and was shocked to find that 12 characters were greyed out on the chara select screen.
There was no patch d/l prompt when loading the game, and the filesize for the character bundle was a mere 108kb, the same as every other 'microtransaction' Capcom was offering for the game. A coincidence? No. They were all clearly in the game already, locked out for an added FIFTEEN QUID charge.
Evil is a strong word. But it's definitely dodgy business practice. I can't think of a single example of another industry actually locking existing content out and charging extra for it. It's a scandal, and retail regulators really need to start looking into it. -
JinTypeNoir 4,392 posts
Seen 4 years ago
Registered 13 years agoDay one patches are completely unacceptable in console games. If you can't just suck it up, eat up a loss from printed copies of the game and delay it, then you don't deserve to be in business any more. There's only one console hardware and the specifics of different models aren't anywhere close to the differences in PC configurations that PC developers must deal with. Get your shit together or you get no money from me.
Up till this generation it was rare that a game was ever so borked it needed a patch or fix in the first place. It still is on hardware like the 3DS or PSP. On the first day? When you KNOW you are delivering something to the consumer that is somewhat broken? Who on earth puts up with this type of abuse?
Not me, that's for sure. I remember reading how the Wii U at launch had you download a bunch of stuff to get it ready for Miiverse and all that. It wasn't mandatory to get it working, apparently, but for many of the new features, it was. I remember thinking, "Why on earth would you think it is acceptable to tell the consumer, 'Hey, that new console you just bought, don't be too excited about the new features because you're going to have to download them first! If you want to try them out, then buy it and sit and wait!'"
Soooo fucked up. -
None of these things are inherently evil.
I am very happy to have pre-ordered Borderlands 2 because I enjoyed playing as a fifth character with her own skill tree which makes the style of play quite different. But would I have pre-ordered a game for skins? No!
I am happy to buy DLC where the story, characters, experience, atmosphere and so on are different from the main game but of course the 'universe' is the same. The perfect DLC for me was 'Pigsy's Perfect 10' for Enslaved, where you play as a side character in the main story with completely different weapons, locations, atmosphere and story. But would I buy on-disk DLC? No!
I am happy to have played Tribes:Ascend, and have indulged in some microtransactions in this free-to-play game. Firstly, because I enjoyed it to the extent that I felt I should reward its developers, and secondly because the microtransactions in that game give you a variety of experience but never pay-to-win. Or at least they try - there's sometimes some balance adjustments to be made after release. New weapons might increase the complexity of the scissors-rock-paper scheme of punch and counter, but you don't get a weapon that will win every encounter. But I would never play a pay-to-win, pay-to-advance or pay-to-skip-artificial-delay game.
And in these days where a game can have more lines of code than a whole Office suite would have had a few years ago, you'll never crush every bug before release so a day one patch is not a surprise. But if you require that patch to make the game playable, you need to question how good that developer is, or how rushed the development was.
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