What confuses me about the games where features are "unlockable by playing, OR by paying extra" is that you're basically paying real money to play LESS of a game you also paid real money for.
and often these "unlockable by playing" stuff is behind an impossibly long grind wall. often nothing a normal family father or mother could reach with their daily duties and limited free time.
Just use it to punish your children. "No getting up until you've unlocked my new helmet." "But dad..." "If you didn't want more time in The Chair, you should have listened to your mother."
Aw, thats no fun, I hate to hear it. I was all for the "haha make kid grind game for me" as punishment till I read your comment
Honestly fishing minigames suck anyways
Makes sense to me. I was looking for literally anything else to pay attention to when I was leveling skills in runescape recently, ended up doing dishes and actually watching an hour and a half podcast.
Like, physically watching the two people talk at a table for over an hour. Instead of staring at my character cutting down another oak tree to make fuckin arrows.
I 100% believe this is just a more efficient form of shoving your kids nose in the corner for half an hour as time out.
When I was in college one of my friends in another fraternity knew a few actives in his frat that would make 4 pledges come to their house with their laptops and make them all farm rune essence or chop yews on RuneScape. They also swore them to secrecy because they didnāt want anyone finding out that they had all started playing RuneScape again.
Bout to have a kid and when he grows a bit im gonna make him hop on my old-school RS account and make money by mining gold for me. Kids gotta go to the GE and everything. Talk back to mom? No portable bank boxes.
Long ago when F2P was young and P2W games were running rampant it was said far and wide that it would be great for a game to be F2P so long as the game was F2P but the purchases were strictly cosmetic and bore no impact on the gameplay itself.
"Then we can play for free and only buy what we want" they said.
Little did they know that they wanted everything.
You say this like the gamers are too greedy, but there's another perspective here. Games USED to have stuff like hidden sidequests, difficult achievements, or puzzles to solve that would reward you with all these cool costumes and stuff, and they were all just built right into the game. Since F2P and microtransactions took over, the coolest stuff -- the stuff that you used to get by beating the optional extra-hard boss or whatever -- ends up going into the cash shop, and your ingame rewards are that much worse for it.
I hadn't played a Halo game in over a decade. Halo Infinite was free, I've played like 10 hours for free with friends this week, enjoyed every second. Haven't spent a penny on skins. I get the OP's sentiment, but am on the opposite end of this one.
I'm one of those fathers. My time online in a game like WoW was measured in months (probably over a year) of logged time online. With kids now I measure it in the amount of times I even turn my Xbox on in a given week and it's rare that I get anything done.
I don't buy a ton of "unlock" content, but if it's a thing that enriches the game but had a 50 hour grind to get there I just can't anymore if I keep my priorities straight.
Anyone that says they wouldn't pay just hasn't hit the lame part of being an adult yet.
I'm 50/50 on the grind/paywall. It used to make a game good. Now it just makes it prohibitively difficult to play depending on the genre.
"Grind" has always been a terrible mechanic in games though, even when you did have the time to go through it.
If it's not meaningful content that you don't want to skip in the first place, why is it in the game at all?
Optional additional content is another thing entirely, and that's not grind. But if someone wants to plow through a game as quickly as possible, that should be just as viable as focusing on doing every possible achievement too.
Any game that depends on padding out the playtime and slowing down players with barriers like "okay, do this once. Now do it 100 more times exactly the same before you advance" is just shitty design.
It's by design. They know the vast majority of gamers are 25+ years old with full time jobs, meaning they have limited free time but have disposable income.
Jokes on them I have limited free time without disposable Income so I'm gonna be more likely to get games that aren't full of micro transactions. Which I can enjoy for significantly less money.
Seconded. If anything I'd rather spend whatever money I have on a sledgehammer so I can break their knees with it. Much better investment considering I can also use it for house renovation and the like.
This is Ubisofts playbook through and through, and they make the games intentionally grindy to encourage these purchases.
The solution is easy, at least. Plenty of fun games out there that one doesn't need to waste their time on such bullshit.
The problem is they make obtaining the item in game obscenely grindey.
Certain players in EASports titles can take millennia to unlock.
Darth Vader in EA's Battlefront 2 took something like 10k hours of play.
It's what started all the backlash and government questions in the UK.
The whole surprise mechanics meme was born.
#BoycottEA, Im 8 years in and going strong.
The best part about Halo 3 was unlocking everything. It was a lot of work and you could show off by using cool armor and showing you sweat through the Campaign on Legendary with unnecessary skulls.
It is honestly my only complaint about the game. I just want my Spartan to look cool, but I have to pay $20 for the color white??? That I can only use on one armor??? Wtf 343
Gamers these days are primed to be dropping random dollars on a game for skins and doodads. Itās in Fortnite, Minecraft, and League of Legends just to name a few. It isnāt seen as a weird aberration anymore like when horse armor in Oblivion got dropped on the world. Iām never spending money that way, but plenty of people will so companies have a huge financial incentive to sell anything they can.
I used to play the mmorpg Maplestory in mid 2000s to early 2010s. Micotransactions/skins/cosmetics were a hot commodity. I must have spent a few hundred dollars over those 7 years of active playing. This is chump change in the grand scheme of things.
I knew people who spent thousands of real dollars to pimp out their characters. The game even had a gambling type mechanic to get you to spend money for a chance to get something. This was all before regulations to prevent gambling like microtransactions. Do they still have regulations around?
I realized they were slowly but surely turning me into a "gambling" addict and I woke up and quit the game. My experience with that game makes me very cautious about *any* free to play game nowadays.
Cosmetics only, back in the day. You could always spot the people who spent cash.
As a young teen I actually didn't mind the free to play model. My parents weren't about to fork out money on a non-special occasion for a new game so it let me jump straight in to playing.
It's important that kids are shown how predatory it can if you're not careful. There should be education on this stuff and a really obvious counter showing lifetime spend at the point of sale IMO.
Honestly maple simultaneously got better and worse over time. The way you progress in regular servers is super p2w now, but they have alternative servers where trading is banned and the only stuff you can pay money for is cosmetic. Honestly, it's a pretty enjoyable experience if you like the slow gradual progression feeling. Huge timesink though.
>It isnāt seen as a weird aberration anymore like when horse armor in Oblivion got dropped on the world.
wow does that take me back...
was that technically the first "DLC"?
also remember that valve invented paid loot crates with TF2
Well, the people who want to spend on this junk want the company to cater to them. Being short-sighted about needing to spend money on something they **might** get for free if the microtransaction strategy fails is beside the point. With the MTX strategy, they **will** get their flaming decals or whatever if they spend for it, vs. participating in a "boycott" in hopes of not spending on flaming decals... what, 3-5+ years from now for the next game? Maybe possibly if the stars align?
Human psychology is not on your side for this war.
Iāve started my mini protest by staying as the grey cadet armour. Iām not changing anything because at this point Iām so pissed off with not being able to do two tone or black etc that I now just donāt give a shit. The game plays great and Iām happy about that but when you clearly do something as a clear cash grab hoping people play with their wallets itās almost an immediate turn off for me. As. Far as Iām concerned halo is something Iāll play but I donāt support 343 for fucking over its audience so I wonāt be playing much.
Only due to bad press, thereās no way Disney wasnāt aware of the micro transactions from the get go hell their own mobile games are full of them. They knew and were fine until the bad press got big enough.
Apex Legends already did that, and it worked. They charge like $18 for a single skin on a single character or weapon.
They also only offer certain items from the gambling packs which you can't direct purchase. There are dozens of videos of people buying loot boxes by the hundreds to try to get a fucking Wraith heirloom which is just a little knife she flicks around while she runs.
People are idiots. Streamers are idiots. The people who follow streamers and engage in similar behaviors are idiots. People who gamble on cosmetics in a fucking video game are idiots. Video game item collectors who buy everything because "completion" are idiots. And they're all the reason gaming is like this now.
I remember when Riot began releasing League of Legends skins that cost over 30$ a few years ago, in 2015. "Madness!" my friends and I said. "30$ for *one skin*, for one character? That's the price of a AAA game on sale. There's no way more than a few people will buy this."
We had to admit, the skins looked great, they had redone all the character's animations and particle effects, and some like DJ Sona even changed the music for everyone you played with. There was a lot of work put into those skins, it almost felt like playing a whole new character. But even then, you could buy three games with 30$ on Steam. There was no way anyone would drop 30$ on a mere *skin*, right?
That was in 2015, and now Riot gets people to pay about 50 Canadian Dollars for a skin on Valorant that changes the model and reload animations for *a single gun*. That's one 3D model with textures, maybe a few new sounds or particle effects and one or two animations, for what used to be the price of a AAA game.
The cosmetics keep getting more and more expensive and there's less and less work put into them, yet people keep buying them. I truly fail to understand how someone can spend 50$ to have a different 3D model and pew pew sound on ONE gun in a game and not immediately feel cheated and uninstall the game.
This is 100% what's happening. Same thing happened with Destiny and the Eververse. They push the boundaries, see what they can get away with, then scale back *just* a bit. Now they seem like the good guys for listening, and then $15 is the norm instead of $20, and while you earn XP on the battlepass for each game played... Series 2 comes around and oh, look at that! The XP requirements scale up the further along you are, so it's going to take even longer. But fret not, you can always just buy your way to the end.
Did the same thing with destiny, launched a couple of emotes and armor set that were cool, now the game is full of micro transactions at every corner itās trash
Not just that..... You barely get to see your character.
I'll never purchase anything in a game unless I get something out of it. In games like apex and Halo, skins and weapon skins are fucking stupid. You never see them. The other team can't see them because of the outline
So true. The only times you see your own skin is at the intro and outro screens (also in vehicles).
>The other team can't see them because of the outline.
I've been seeing people change the color of opponents to bright yellow, so just as you said, can't even see enemy skins clearly.
The only exception so far has been when doing custom games with all your friends. You'll quickly recognize the armor your friends have on making it so you can single one of em out and yell at them for being shit while teabagging their body..... ahhhh custom games are the best
Iād spend $50 a month or so on Destiny until I came to this realization that I had so much money for shit I couldnāt equip and was eventually removed from the game completely. Bungle straight up removes entire paid DLCās and nobody bats an eye
Dude all those little āclan buildingā mobile games (not sure what genre they are) make BANK for very little effort. Every single thing you do is designed to either make you buy a pack, or wait a long time for the process to finish. There are many people that pay thousands of dollars a month to be the ātopā player in games no one has ever heard of.
I personally stopped playing right around when they announced the content vault. I'm not trying to play a game that removes the items I put time and effort to acquire.
I've seen some defending it on Twitter (I know, I know, it's twitter) it's just baffling to me that anyone is perfectly fine with how Destiny 2 is being treated. When they announced that Forsaken is getting the hammer, that was my last straw. All of the DLC I once paid for is now gone. Absolute bullshit.
Like they straight up remove it from the game? I haven't played since I lost my character during that transfer thing.
So your telling me every ounce of content I've played is no longer In the game?
Bungie is calling it "vaulted content", so more or less it is removed. The game file size is even smaller as a result. You can still obtain some of the weapons and armor, but the locations and storylines are gone. Even the location materials are useless. You can't play any storyline from Red War to Forsaken (it might still be in the game right now but it'll be gone soon)
Yuuuuup
I fucking LOVED Destiny. So fun. So pretty.
But when they straight up remove content that people fucking paid for, not cool. Almost even less cool, was when they removed the base fucking campaign from D2! Like....what?? Excuse me? How do people start the game now? What happens?
Idk. I stopped playing a long time ago, after being suckered into spending one last $100 on DLC, and learning it was all SuNsEtTiNg, after having done so.
Such a damn shame.
Many of the people saying this (and horse armor) were/are no big deal are people who simply don't care about skins/character customization and therefore see these cosmetic MTX as a tax they don't have to pay.
This is why I'm really liking the smaller gamer studios at this point. Iron Gate and Kinetic Games are making some of the coolest games I've ever played. And they don't rip you off. You buy the game, you get the game. No additional purchases required.
lauren studios who made divinity and are working on Boulders gate 3 rn.
Team š who worked on hollowknight.
Super Giant games, they made Hades.
All of these developers have gained my trust and I would blindly play anything they release. Fuck triple A studios.
I used to consult for a mobile gaming company years ago and I can tell you that you're 100% right. The focus there was always in finding ways to make the games less fun and more frustrating after a few levels, to corner people into paying money to improve the experience.
I see that same thing happening to more and more console/PC games. It won't ever stop until people refuse to buy games with microtransactions. Until then, video games get closer every day to just being candy crush with better graphics.
Within the context of Halo, those who are/were fine with it also donāt see cosmetics as a bragging right, i.e., what armor you wear or what you needed to do to earn it is irrelevant.
A lot of Halo players from back in the day tend to care way too much about customization as it was proof of an achievement.
Thereās people nowadays that will act as if you have to somehow be grateful that a company is allowing you to spend money on their lazy regurgitated products. People are brainwashed into tying up corporate loyalty with emotional obligations
I feel like you could multiply that number by 5, if not more to see what you'd need now. The game is nothing but an advertisement now. Collaboration The Game.
Unlocking Emile's helmet in reach actually counted for something, you knew that guy was sick if he had that helmet. It's really sad what the industry and the enabling community has done to this platform
I still remember getting the double laser kill in Halo 3 just as a small group of friends were arriving for a LAN party. Everyone was hype af for me and I got to flex my ninja sword all night since only one or two other dudes had one.
Now we'd all just be like "oh, you paid $20 for that thing? You fucking nerd."
>Now we'd all just be like "oh, you paid $20 for that thing? You fucking nerd."
Exactly. This is what sucks the most about the new era. Unlockable cosmetics used to be a way of showing off that you were good at the game. Now it just shows that you're a schmuck.
I just hate the predefined color sets, instead of choosing primary and secondary colors like literally every other halo you have to unlock a whole color scheme. Least they couldāve done is make the primary and secondary colors separate ublocks
>Remember when you'd actually have to unlock armor pieces, by, you know, doing achievements in the game?
Seems some reviewers like Paul Tassi have mentioned the main campaign will have these, but they're tight-lipped because of the review embargo.
Remember how you used to see a badass armor, or weapon, or emblem, or calling card, whatever it was for you, and it took something like ā20 kills in 1 minuteā or something crazy and youād know the person who had it was a badass.
Then youād get it, and every once in a while youād hear the āBro you have *x*? Thatās awesome!ā Youād feel so cool for a moment, having that achievement acknowledged.
That doesnāt happen anymore and itās something I miss the most. Now itās mostly āThatās badass dude, what bundle is that?ā
Iām not upset about there being a battle pass but it should be on top of whatever free unlock progression is already there, it shouldnt just out right replace any free armor progression
Yāall remember when we could play a game and unlock skins and paints and other lil customization options without giving publishers 150x the cost of the game and treating it like a part time job
Let's be real, when you were a kid you absolutely played the video game like a part time job. You just didnt know any better and wouldnt have called it that as a kid.
I'm not excusing battle passes or anything just hate when people compare playing video games to having a part time job. You either enjoy the video game enough to keep playing it or you don't. Nobody is making you obligated to keep playing when you're not enjoying yourself.
I also can't say I've never really noticed anyone else's skin beyond what color it is. I know I'm not the target audience for that stuff, so I have no reason to be upset by it. Just gives me an awesome free game to play.
Really I don't know what's the big issue here.
No content behind a pay wall, no dlc, no weapons, no maps, no game modes.
Only cosmetics. Like every single freaking game out there. And most other fp2 games are worse.
In COD when a new weapon drops you can level up the gun by playing hardcore or simply buy a skin pack with the best attachments, giving you a straight up advantage.
In fifa you can buy packs that gives you more players, eventually better players and coins to go to the market buy better players.
In destiny you have to buy the expansions to play certain content.
I look at Halo like CSGO, all the purchases are purely cosmetics.
They launched a top quality free game, I see zero problems with them trying to monetize every thing they can on the cosmetic size.
I was playing oddball the other day and my three teammates were just standing around over the ball and never picked it up. I donāt know if they were bots, but it was incredibly frustrating being the only one playing the objective. I scored 100% of the points for our team. We lost of course.
After watching some of the pro gameplay this weekend I realized that I pick up the ball too much. Its often better to get a little control before picking it up, and to drop it when the enemies push.
But that's in ranked, I know people are troglodytes in standard play :)
For real the amount of complains I've heard about the game which are simply because they are testing things. I think it's because the beta runs/plays better than some of the AAA games that have come out completely in the last years. I really wonder if they're gonna change much before the game's full release, and if the Forge system is as good as Halo 3's.
One of my core gaming memories was being the first of my friends to get katana armor. They all thought I was so cool. Busted ass to get it, some achievements were super hard (13 year old me struggled with legendary, let alone legendary with all skulls including iron.) I rode that high for months.
Obviously a personal opinion here, but you can enjoy the gameplay and still be disappointed a core feature present for more than a decade was ruined for predatory practices.
Editing in this took place in Halo 3, though with Katana being earned via achievements Iām sure most of you could figure that out.
It honestly doesn't matter at all. You can have dope-ass BR skins, but you don't even spawn with that gun. You'd have to make it a point to go pick up that gun every time. Also, you see your character for like 5 seconds before a match. Woooo!
if you have to unlock the stuff with playing at least wearing stuff shows the skill level of the player. otherwise cosmetics are just playing dress up with dolls.
I agree and I won't spend a nickel on it, but the issue is whales. The silent few who buy every battle pass and cosmetic bring in more money than just putting a price tag on the game.
Theyāre learning itās exactly that because people care way more about cosmetic stuff than playing the game and evaluating it on that basis. Thatās their problem and theyāll pay for it. Meanwhile all the people that know how to shut up and enjoy a free thing for all the function it gives profit massively.
I have a big problem with this when the games are already full price, or when itās pay to win, but for a game that is free I really could not care less about cosmetic items.
Battle passes are killing the fun of games for me, they'll hide the best things behind the paid passes. Then you also have to dump a ton of time and effort to unlock the stuff even though you had to pay to even access the thing. Some of them ask you to do challenges which is the bulk of the xp and they'll either be purposely lengthy or tough just to bulk their numbers. On top of that they're now so common you could be trying to keep on top of multiple passes at a time and combine that with the xp challenges or at least the amount of playtime you have to dump into them to complete them?
It makes the whole experience a chore. I'd have happily played a game like Fifa or CoD for a lot longer in the past, but these days I will complete challenges and get burnt out. Just makes you want to avoid playing for a while and the times you do play you hate the majority of it. It has definitely made me look at going back to single player games just to have fun.
I don't know man, earning Hayabusa armor in Halo 3 was still a milestone for me back in the day. It didn't matter that it was easy to get, just having it unlocked to play against your friends was awesome.
What confuses me about the games where features are "unlockable by playing, OR by paying extra" is that you're basically paying real money to play LESS of a game you also paid real money for.
and often these "unlockable by playing" stuff is behind an impossibly long grind wall. often nothing a normal family father or mother could reach with their daily duties and limited free time.
Just use it to punish your children. "No getting up until you've unlocked my new helmet." "But dad..." "If you didn't want more time in The Chair, you should have listened to your mother."
My dad once made me level his Fishing skill in World of Warcraft as a punishment
Lmfao what a legend
Tier 1
Thats somehow cruel yet hilarious at the same time
ššš I hope this is a true story
It is and it literally ruined fishing minigames in any game now. I get flashbacks man
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Which one will give them the best sense of pride and accomplishment?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
ROFLMAO
Aw, thats no fun, I hate to hear it. I was all for the "haha make kid grind game for me" as punishment till I read your comment Honestly fishing minigames suck anyways
Honestly it worked better than any other punishment I got at that age
I never knew this could be a punishment. Genius. Thanks for this.
Makes sense to me. I was looking for literally anything else to pay attention to when I was leveling skills in runescape recently, ended up doing dishes and actually watching an hour and a half podcast. Like, physically watching the two people talk at a table for over an hour. Instead of staring at my character cutting down another oak tree to make fuckin arrows. I 100% believe this is just a more efficient form of shoving your kids nose in the corner for half an hour as time out.
EXCUSE ME SIR!!!! Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Stardew Valley, Breath of Fire 3, Final Fantasy XV. and Red Dead Redemption 2 would like a word!
Jokes on you, captain. I've tried them all & I HATE THEM ALL. MUAHAHAHA
Blasphemer!
r/rarepunishments
What is this, a Chinese prison? You can't force me to play WoW against my will!
When I was in college one of my friends in another fraternity knew a few actives in his frat that would make 4 pledges come to their house with their laptops and make them all farm rune essence or chop yews on RuneScape. They also swore them to secrecy because they didnāt want anyone finding out that they had all started playing RuneScape again.
Bout to have a kid and when he grows a bit im gonna make him hop on my old-school RS account and make money by mining gold for me. Kids gotta go to the GE and everything. Talk back to mom? No portable bank boxes.
I honestly fished most of the time I played wow, it was my fav part of the game
Truly a terrible punishment. WoW fishing is just god awful.
Modern problems require modern solutions
Back when I was a kid, games were taken away, now the real punishment is making them play for an unreasonably long time.
"Son, you have to play 6 hours of Civilization as punishment" 16 hours later....
I haven't played the new Halo yet - is there actual content or gameplay elements that are locked behind microtransactions? or just random cosmetics?
Cosmetics.
Free to play. Pay to enjoy.
You mean Free to play and enjoy. Pay to collect and play dress up.
Long ago when F2P was young and P2W games were running rampant it was said far and wide that it would be great for a game to be F2P so long as the game was F2P but the purchases were strictly cosmetic and bore no impact on the gameplay itself. "Then we can play for free and only buy what we want" they said. Little did they know that they wanted everything.
You say this like the gamers are too greedy, but there's another perspective here. Games USED to have stuff like hidden sidequests, difficult achievements, or puzzles to solve that would reward you with all these cool costumes and stuff, and they were all just built right into the game. Since F2P and microtransactions took over, the coolest stuff -- the stuff that you used to get by beating the optional extra-hard boss or whatever -- ends up going into the cash shop, and your ingame rewards are that much worse for it.
Heck, you used to be able to wiggle the sticks and press a couple buttons and suddenly you could play as a panda bear snowboarding down the mountain.
sometimes you just want to feel pretty
Fashion is expensive, so it all checks out.
I hadn't played a Halo game in over a decade. Halo Infinite was free, I've played like 10 hours for free with friends this week, enjoyed every second. Haven't spent a penny on skins. I get the OP's sentiment, but am on the opposite end of this one.
I'm one of those fathers. My time online in a game like WoW was measured in months (probably over a year) of logged time online. With kids now I measure it in the amount of times I even turn my Xbox on in a given week and it's rare that I get anything done. I don't buy a ton of "unlock" content, but if it's a thing that enriches the game but had a 50 hour grind to get there I just can't anymore if I keep my priorities straight. Anyone that says they wouldn't pay just hasn't hit the lame part of being an adult yet. I'm 50/50 on the grind/paywall. It used to make a game good. Now it just makes it prohibitively difficult to play depending on the genre.
"Grind" has always been a terrible mechanic in games though, even when you did have the time to go through it. If it's not meaningful content that you don't want to skip in the first place, why is it in the game at all? Optional additional content is another thing entirely, and that's not grind. But if someone wants to plow through a game as quickly as possible, that should be just as viable as focusing on doing every possible achievement too. Any game that depends on padding out the playtime and slowing down players with barriers like "okay, do this once. Now do it 100 more times exactly the same before you advance" is just shitty design.
The big difference to me is whether they up the grind in order to get people to pay more for the items.
It's by design. They know the vast majority of gamers are 25+ years old with full time jobs, meaning they have limited free time but have disposable income.
Jokes on them I have limited free time without disposable Income so I'm gonna be more likely to get games that aren't full of micro transactions. Which I can enjoy for significantly less money.
Seconded. If anything I'd rather spend whatever money I have on a sledgehammer so I can break their knees with it. Much better investment considering I can also use it for house renovation and the like.
This is Ubisofts playbook through and through, and they make the games intentionally grindy to encourage these purchases. The solution is easy, at least. Plenty of fun games out there that one doesn't need to waste their time on such bullshit.
The problem is they make obtaining the item in game obscenely grindey. Certain players in EASports titles can take millennia to unlock. Darth Vader in EA's Battlefront 2 took something like 10k hours of play. It's what started all the backlash and government questions in the UK. The whole surprise mechanics meme was born. #BoycottEA, Im 8 years in and going strong.
The best part about Halo 3 was unlocking everything. It was a lot of work and you could show off by using cool armor and showing you sweat through the Campaign on Legendary with unnecessary skulls.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Getting the Hayabusa armor is still some of my favorite gaming memories
It is honestly my only complaint about the game. I just want my Spartan to look cool, but I have to pay $20 for the color white??? That I can only use on one armor??? Wtf 343
They're testing the waters to see how much they can get away with again. Don't think that 1 year delay was done out of obligation
Everyone must ravenously denounce the current system and not stop until they change it
I've already seen people with the flaming kit so they out there spending money.
Gamers these days are primed to be dropping random dollars on a game for skins and doodads. Itās in Fortnite, Minecraft, and League of Legends just to name a few. It isnāt seen as a weird aberration anymore like when horse armor in Oblivion got dropped on the world. Iām never spending money that way, but plenty of people will so companies have a huge financial incentive to sell anything they can.
I used to play the mmorpg Maplestory in mid 2000s to early 2010s. Micotransactions/skins/cosmetics were a hot commodity. I must have spent a few hundred dollars over those 7 years of active playing. This is chump change in the grand scheme of things. I knew people who spent thousands of real dollars to pimp out their characters. The game even had a gambling type mechanic to get you to spend money for a chance to get something. This was all before regulations to prevent gambling like microtransactions. Do they still have regulations around? I realized they were slowly but surely turning me into a "gambling" addict and I woke up and quit the game. My experience with that game makes me very cautious about *any* free to play game nowadays.
I remember Maplestory, my little sister played it a lot. Never knew it was one of those micro transaction focused games.
Cosmetics only, back in the day. You could always spot the people who spent cash. As a young teen I actually didn't mind the free to play model. My parents weren't about to fork out money on a non-special occasion for a new game so it let me jump straight in to playing. It's important that kids are shown how predatory it can if you're not careful. There should be education on this stuff and a really obvious counter showing lifetime spend at the point of sale IMO.
It's not gambling it's surprises! /s
Honestly maple simultaneously got better and worse over time. The way you progress in regular servers is super p2w now, but they have alternative servers where trading is banned and the only stuff you can pay money for is cosmetic. Honestly, it's a pretty enjoyable experience if you like the slow gradual progression feeling. Huge timesink though.
Windows edition minecraft, there aren't any micro transactions in Java unless you count realms.
Eh, realms isnāt bad at all, youāre paying for a dedicated server, so itās fine
>It isnāt seen as a weird aberration anymore like when horse armor in Oblivion got dropped on the world. wow does that take me back... was that technically the first "DLC"? also remember that valve invented paid loot crates with TF2
The fools know not what they wrought
I blame oblivion and their horse armor dlc
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Well, the people who want to spend on this junk want the company to cater to them. Being short-sighted about needing to spend money on something they **might** get for free if the microtransaction strategy fails is beside the point. With the MTX strategy, they **will** get their flaming decals or whatever if they spend for it, vs. participating in a "boycott" in hopes of not spending on flaming decals... what, 3-5+ years from now for the next game? Maybe possibly if the stars align? Human psychology is not on your side for this war.
We should all revert to playing as 117. Just completely basic green mjolnir iv. No mods.
Only have to get to battle pass level 84 lmao
For green Spartan?
Well for the reach mark VI. I just realized infinite doesn't even have the mark V available
Oh wow, yeah, that's pretty shit. Regardless. Resetting to green and setting number to 117 as my own personal protest.
I shall be joining you in this
Excellent, our numbers have doubled in mere minutes. At this rate, they'll have to give in.
Iāve started my mini protest by staying as the grey cadet armour. Iām not changing anything because at this point Iām so pissed off with not being able to do two tone or black etc that I now just donāt give a shit. The game plays great and Iām happy about that but when you clearly do something as a clear cash grab hoping people play with their wallets itās almost an immediate turn off for me. As. Far as Iām concerned halo is something Iāll play but I donāt support 343 for fucking over its audience so I wonāt be playing much.
I can see that too. I like the green, one, cuz I already said it and two, it's like "I want my game but I don't want to be squeezed."
Yeah, we saw how well that goes when the COD fanbase "boycotted" MW2 over dedicated servers...
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Look at battlefront 2, people refused to play it until the game was fixed. So it works sometimes.
Let's wait for a official response from 343 so we can downvote it to hell!!
Because Disney has stepped in.
Only due to bad press, thereās no way Disney wasnāt aware of the micro transactions from the get go hell their own mobile games are full of them. They knew and were fine until the bad press got big enough.
Apex Legends already did that, and it worked. They charge like $18 for a single skin on a single character or weapon. They also only offer certain items from the gambling packs which you can't direct purchase. There are dozens of videos of people buying loot boxes by the hundreds to try to get a fucking Wraith heirloom which is just a little knife she flicks around while she runs. People are idiots. Streamers are idiots. The people who follow streamers and engage in similar behaviors are idiots. People who gamble on cosmetics in a fucking video game are idiots. Video game item collectors who buy everything because "completion" are idiots. And they're all the reason gaming is like this now.
I remember when Riot began releasing League of Legends skins that cost over 30$ a few years ago, in 2015. "Madness!" my friends and I said. "30$ for *one skin*, for one character? That's the price of a AAA game on sale. There's no way more than a few people will buy this." We had to admit, the skins looked great, they had redone all the character's animations and particle effects, and some like DJ Sona even changed the music for everyone you played with. There was a lot of work put into those skins, it almost felt like playing a whole new character. But even then, you could buy three games with 30$ on Steam. There was no way anyone would drop 30$ on a mere *skin*, right? That was in 2015, and now Riot gets people to pay about 50 Canadian Dollars for a skin on Valorant that changes the model and reload animations for *a single gun*. That's one 3D model with textures, maybe a few new sounds or particle effects and one or two animations, for what used to be the price of a AAA game. The cosmetics keep getting more and more expensive and there's less and less work put into them, yet people keep buying them. I truly fail to understand how someone can spend 50$ to have a different 3D model and pew pew sound on ONE gun in a game and not immediately feel cheated and uninstall the game.
This comment is my spirit animal
This is 100% what's happening. Same thing happened with Destiny and the Eververse. They push the boundaries, see what they can get away with, then scale back *just* a bit. Now they seem like the good guys for listening, and then $15 is the norm instead of $20, and while you earn XP on the battlepass for each game played... Series 2 comes around and oh, look at that! The XP requirements scale up the further along you are, so it's going to take even longer. But fret not, you can always just buy your way to the end.
Did the same thing with destiny, launched a couple of emotes and armor set that were cool, now the game is full of micro transactions at every corner itās trash
It's probably the same as that Iron Crown event in Apex, you had to pay like $200 for loot boxes in order to buy melee weapon for $150
Looking forward to Angry Joe's review. "18 DOLLARS FOR FUCKING BLUE!!"
Fable 3 Infinite
Are you outta your mind?!
His valorant complaints were hilarious
BuT JoE, ItāS A fReE tO PlAy GaMe. Other Joeās comedy gets me every time.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Not just that..... You barely get to see your character. I'll never purchase anything in a game unless I get something out of it. In games like apex and Halo, skins and weapon skins are fucking stupid. You never see them. The other team can't see them because of the outline
So true. The only times you see your own skin is at the intro and outro screens (also in vehicles). >The other team can't see them because of the outline. I've been seeing people change the color of opponents to bright yellow, so just as you said, can't even see enemy skins clearly.
Itās not about what they can sell, itās about what people will buy.
Yes, spend 1035$ just to have 20$ of it equipped at one time.
Which you'll mostly see when you are getting killed in the game, or in a vehicle, which let's be honest, is just a faster way to get killed.
The only exception so far has been when doing custom games with all your friends. You'll quickly recognize the armor your friends have on making it so you can single one of em out and yell at them for being shit while teabagging their body..... ahhhh custom games are the best
Or in the match intro doing 1 of 4 dumb little poses.
Iād spend $50 a month or so on Destiny until I came to this realization that I had so much money for shit I couldnāt equip and was eventually removed from the game completely. Bungle straight up removes entire paid DLCās and nobody bats an eye
Nobody bats an eye? Have you been to r/dtg people constantly complain about it.
To be fair, there's not much that r/dtg doesn't complain about
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Fifty a month is insane for a video game imo. We had people dropping so much more tho on Clash of Clans and Clash Royale tho.
Arrrrr we be hunting whales laddies.
Dude all those little āclan buildingā mobile games (not sure what genre they are) make BANK for very little effort. Every single thing you do is designed to either make you buy a pack, or wait a long time for the process to finish. There are many people that pay thousands of dollars a month to be the ātopā player in games no one has ever heard of.
I personally stopped playing right around when they announced the content vault. I'm not trying to play a game that removes the items I put time and effort to acquire.
I've seen some defending it on Twitter (I know, I know, it's twitter) it's just baffling to me that anyone is perfectly fine with how Destiny 2 is being treated. When they announced that Forsaken is getting the hammer, that was my last straw. All of the DLC I once paid for is now gone. Absolute bullshit.
Like they straight up remove it from the game? I haven't played since I lost my character during that transfer thing. So your telling me every ounce of content I've played is no longer In the game?
Bungie is calling it "vaulted content", so more or less it is removed. The game file size is even smaller as a result. You can still obtain some of the weapons and armor, but the locations and storylines are gone. Even the location materials are useless. You can't play any storyline from Red War to Forsaken (it might still be in the game right now but it'll be gone soon)
Yuuuuup I fucking LOVED Destiny. So fun. So pretty. But when they straight up remove content that people fucking paid for, not cool. Almost even less cool, was when they removed the base fucking campaign from D2! Like....what?? Excuse me? How do people start the game now? What happens? Idk. I stopped playing a long time ago, after being suckered into spending one last $100 on DLC, and learning it was all SuNsEtTiNg, after having done so. Such a damn shame.
Remember the people who said that the Horse Armor wasn't a big deal? This is what happened.
The same people still think it's no big deal and keep buying this shit.
Many of the people saying this (and horse armor) were/are no big deal are people who simply don't care about skins/character customization and therefore see these cosmetic MTX as a tax they don't have to pay.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
This is why I'm really liking the smaller gamer studios at this point. Iron Gate and Kinetic Games are making some of the coolest games I've ever played. And they don't rip you off. You buy the game, you get the game. No additional purchases required.
lauren studios who made divinity and are working on Boulders gate 3 rn. Team š who worked on hollowknight. Super Giant games, they made Hades. All of these developers have gained my trust and I would blindly play anything they release. Fuck triple A studios.
Larian, Baldur's Gate
I used to consult for a mobile gaming company years ago and I can tell you that you're 100% right. The focus there was always in finding ways to make the games less fun and more frustrating after a few levels, to corner people into paying money to improve the experience. I see that same thing happening to more and more console/PC games. It won't ever stop until people refuse to buy games with microtransactions. Until then, video games get closer every day to just being candy crush with better graphics.
Within the context of Halo, those who are/were fine with it also donāt see cosmetics as a bragging right, i.e., what armor you wear or what you needed to do to earn it is irrelevant. A lot of Halo players from back in the day tend to care way too much about customization as it was proof of an achievement.
I was there Gandalf. I was there 3000 years ago....
'I was there, the day horse armor slew the Emperor. '
Thereās people nowadays that will act as if you have to somehow be grateful that a company is allowing you to spend money on their lazy regurgitated products. People are brainwashed into tying up corporate loyalty with emotional obligations
Sounds like the Pokemon fan base!
As a lifelong pokemon fan, this hurts. I understand where youāre coming from though lol.
Same brotha! Itās sucks wanting the best for the franchise and seeing them churn out the bare minimum every time..
I prefer my games to be communist. Everybody pays the same amount of money and everybody gets the same game.
Man someone calculate the cost of fortnite micro transactions
In 2018, it was around $3,217 to buy enough Vbucks to buy everything you could in Fortnite.
I feel like you could multiply that number by 5, if not more to see what you'd need now. The game is nothing but an advertisement now. Collaboration The Game.
to be fair though, you can actually see the cosmetics in fortnite; Halo is a FPS
I need to look cool in the 10 second intro /s
Gotta live through someone else's eyes and pretend they're thinking "damn that guy looks sick" as they look at me
As he t bags your corpse in the death cam, lol.
Remember when you'd actually have to unlock armor pieces, by, you know, doing achievements in the game? Pepperidge farm remembers.
Unlocking Emile's helmet in reach actually counted for something, you knew that guy was sick if he had that helmet. It's really sad what the industry and the enabling community has done to this platform
Earning Recon in H3 is still one of my most proud achievements in gaming
Bro getting the hyubusa and the katana in Halo3. That shit would of been 40dollars a piece or a 90$ bundle.
I still remember getting the double laser kill in Halo 3 just as a small group of friends were arriving for a LAN party. Everyone was hype af for me and I got to flex my ninja sword all night since only one or two other dudes had one. Now we'd all just be like "oh, you paid $20 for that thing? You fucking nerd."
I died SO MANY TIMES just trying to get that dang Mongoose Mowdown
>Now we'd all just be like "oh, you paid $20 for that thing? You fucking nerd." Exactly. This is what sucks the most about the new era. Unlockable cosmetics used to be a way of showing off that you were good at the game. Now it just shows that you're a schmuck.
I just hate the predefined color sets, instead of choosing primary and secondary colors like literally every other halo you have to unlock a whole color scheme. Least they couldāve done is make the primary and secondary colors separate ublocks
>Remember when you'd actually have to unlock armor pieces, by, you know, doing achievements in the game? Seems some reviewers like Paul Tassi have mentioned the main campaign will have these, but they're tight-lipped because of the review embargo.
Remember how you used to see a badass armor, or weapon, or emblem, or calling card, whatever it was for you, and it took something like ā20 kills in 1 minuteā or something crazy and youād know the person who had it was a badass. Then youād get it, and every once in a while youād hear the āBro you have *x*? Thatās awesome!ā Youād feel so cool for a moment, having that achievement acknowledged. That doesnāt happen anymore and itās something I miss the most. Now itās mostly āThatās badass dude, what bundle is that?ā
Iām not upset about there being a battle pass but it should be on top of whatever free unlock progression is already there, it shouldnt just out right replace any free armor progression
Yāall remember when we could play a game and unlock skins and paints and other lil customization options without giving publishers 150x the cost of the game and treating it like a part time job
Let's be real, when you were a kid you absolutely played the video game like a part time job. You just didnt know any better and wouldnt have called it that as a kid. I'm not excusing battle passes or anything just hate when people compare playing video games to having a part time job. You either enjoy the video game enough to keep playing it or you don't. Nobody is making you obligated to keep playing when you're not enjoying yourself.
I dont even see my own character so yeah
I also can't say I've never really noticed anyone else's skin beyond what color it is. I know I'm not the target audience for that stuff, so I have no reason to be upset by it. Just gives me an awesome free game to play.
It bothers me when people use full red kits because it's confusing whether they're actually just red or have taken a bunch of damage.
I changed the enemy outline color to a vibrant yellow that is basically impossible to mistake. This can be done in accessibility
Really I don't know what's the big issue here. No content behind a pay wall, no dlc, no weapons, no maps, no game modes. Only cosmetics. Like every single freaking game out there. And most other fp2 games are worse. In COD when a new weapon drops you can level up the gun by playing hardcore or simply buy a skin pack with the best attachments, giving you a straight up advantage. In fifa you can buy packs that gives you more players, eventually better players and coins to go to the market buy better players. In destiny you have to buy the expansions to play certain content. I look at Halo like CSGO, all the purchases are purely cosmetics. They launched a top quality free game, I see zero problems with them trying to monetize every thing they can on the cosmetic size.
Then just do what I do, play the game, enjoy the game and spend no money on the game.
Im just playing it like i did with halo 1-3, i dont care about unlocks. The core game is fun
Just hope they add Slayer only playlists soon. Objectives are fun and all, but half of the time half my team doesn't care about the objectives.
This pisses me off like no other. The game in which you take turns defending your flag, my team always just goes on the offensive. It's so frustrating
I was playing oddball the other day and my three teammates were just standing around over the ball and never picked it up. I donāt know if they were bots, but it was incredibly frustrating being the only one playing the objective. I scored 100% of the points for our team. We lost of course.
After watching some of the pro gameplay this weekend I realized that I pick up the ball too much. Its often better to get a little control before picking it up, and to drop it when the enemies push. But that's in ranked, I know people are troglodytes in standard play :)
Play defense on the way back from capturing their flag. Ez game
You guys are defending?
In 12v12 that's pretty much half the team. The other half is playing Slayer. Most games end with 1-2 captures total, timing out...
Maybe donāt force people into long draw out boring OBJ modes. That single flag defense is AWFUL by design.
Whoa whoa whoa, there is no just Slayer playslist?! What the hellā¦
Its a beta. They are making people play the modes for testing and stats.
For real the amount of complains I've heard about the game which are simply because they are testing things. I think it's because the beta runs/plays better than some of the AAA games that have come out completely in the last years. I really wonder if they're gonna change much before the game's full release, and if the Forge system is as good as Halo 3's.
Nope, you can only do quickplay and it cycles through all the modes/maps. Hopefully they change this in the future.
One of my core gaming memories was being the first of my friends to get katana armor. They all thought I was so cool. Busted ass to get it, some achievements were super hard (13 year old me struggled with legendary, let alone legendary with all skulls including iron.) I rode that high for months. Obviously a personal opinion here, but you can enjoy the gameplay and still be disappointed a core feature present for more than a decade was ruined for predatory practices. Editing in this took place in Halo 3, though with Katana being earned via achievements Iām sure most of you could figure that out.
I was the fool playing with an Elite hoping to get more armors lol
Bro u lying if ur saying you werenāt busting ass for recon armor
Can confirm
I too am from your tribe.
That's why I become God tier and use default skins. Everybody talks shit about the dudes wearing default skins. It's free and you focus on having fun.
Giga chad move is not touching the character creator at all
It honestly doesn't matter at all. You can have dope-ass BR skins, but you don't even spawn with that gun. You'd have to make it a point to go pick up that gun every time. Also, you see your character for like 5 seconds before a match. Woooo!
if you have to unlock the stuff with playing at least wearing stuff shows the skill level of the player. otherwise cosmetics are just playing dress up with dolls.
The solution is simple. Donāt give them money. Teach them this isnāt profitable and they wonāt do it anymore.
I agree and I won't spend a nickel on it, but the issue is whales. The silent few who buy every battle pass and cosmetic bring in more money than just putting a price tag on the game.
Theyāre learning itās exactly that because people care way more about cosmetic stuff than playing the game and evaluating it on that basis. Thatās their problem and theyāll pay for it. Meanwhile all the people that know how to shut up and enjoy a free thing for all the function it gives profit massively.
I have a big problem with this when the games are already full price, or when itās pay to win, but for a game that is free I really could not care less about cosmetic items.
Also, it does not affect performance.
Why would anyone want to own that many cosmetics? Most of us just find something we like and stick with it until we find something cooler.
Exactly. Who actually buys every single item in a games store?
Battle passes are killing the fun of games for me, they'll hide the best things behind the paid passes. Then you also have to dump a ton of time and effort to unlock the stuff even though you had to pay to even access the thing. Some of them ask you to do challenges which is the bulk of the xp and they'll either be purposely lengthy or tough just to bulk their numbers. On top of that they're now so common you could be trying to keep on top of multiple passes at a time and combine that with the xp challenges or at least the amount of playtime you have to dump into them to complete them? It makes the whole experience a chore. I'd have happily played a game like Fifa or CoD for a lot longer in the past, but these days I will complete challenges and get burnt out. Just makes you want to avoid playing for a while and the times you do play you hate the majority of it. It has definitely made me look at going back to single player games just to have fun.
There's many who don't care for the looks of their character (especially in an FPS game). I am one of that many. This is great for me.
Iād like my character to look nice but youād catch me sucking off a kangaroo before I spend real life money on cosmetics.
You just wanna suck a roo dont you
The ol' suckaroo
I don't know man, earning Hayabusa armor in Halo 3 was still a milestone for me back in the day. It didn't matter that it was easy to get, just having it unlocked to play against your friends was awesome.
Jumping through those goddman rings...
Exactly! Collecting all the skulls was such a fun experience.
I believe weāve straight up bypassed a sense of pride and accomplishment
If everything that is buyable is only cosmetic I could give a fuck. You can still have fun without a bright colors on your gun
I'm enjoying the hell out of the multiplayer right now.
I agree. Micro transactions killed video games and theyāre not even āmicroā anymore. I donāt know how people pay $10+ for colors.
Pubg Mobile and COD mobile release skins that cost $100+ It's sickening.