Posts on Current Forum | Archived Posts
|
|
|
||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
| Frequently Asked Forum Questions | |
|||
|
||||
|
|
|||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| Search Older Posts on This Forum: Posts on Current Forum | Archived Posts | ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| Great read. | |
| Posted By: Gravemind <kuukan_no_kage@yahoo.com> | Date: 2/28/13 6:40 p.m. |
In Response To: Micro-transactions and character progression (pete_the_duck) I especially like the part where you said: The game itself should keep you invested—not the urge to acquire something you’ve already had in singleplayer, or with the promise of something you’ll eventually attain. That's something I've been saying for quite a while now. In my Halo 4 review, I said "Remember when the gameplay experience was its own reward and games didn’t have to dangle carrots in front of people to motivate them? Let that be the rule once again." I hate how modern game design treats the player's time as a commodity by attaching XP and tenure-based rewards to your actions. You're absolutely right when you say that unlocks as they typically exist today offer a false sense of accomplishment. It's especially egregious when unlocks actually affect game balance in the MP environment. I remember when accomplishments were almost always meaningful: beating any game on the highest difficulty (or just beating any older game, most of which had one difficulty level: HARD!), getting a high score in Pac-Man or Galaga, beating my best time in a racing game, finding all 120 stars in Super Mario 64, beating Dark Bahamut to get Cecil's best sword in FFIV, etc. But in Halo 4, I'm still unlocking things despite the game having been out for over three months, yet after 104 level-ups I don't feel like I've accomplished anything. If I see something I like but then realize I have to play for days worth of play time (I've logged in 490 matches for a total of 3 days & 4 hours worth of play time in H4 MP), I simply feel like my time isn't being viewed by 343I as something valuable to me. I feel like they're trying to exploit me by enticing me to keep playing with the promise that I'll unlock this cool new thing. Players should have all armors, weapons, emblems, etc. available to them from the get-go. There are plenty of ways to keep players interested without having them grind, grind, grind to unlock aesthetic-only stuff like armor or, worse, things that affect MP gameplay, which destroy any semblance of competitive balance by eliminating the level playing field that had been the rule in Halo 1, 2, 3, & Reach. In the past, developers were able to entice players to keep coming back without adding Skinner box bullshit or any of that other nonsense, and they did so by crafting compelling gameplay experiences. If they could do so then, they can do so now. As for microtransactions, they are DLC done wrong, at least with how they've been utilized. The point of DLC (or least what the point of DLC should be) is to breathe new live into a game that has been out for a while. Map packs for shooters are the classic example. They're typically released months after the game ships and by adding variety to the game's roster of maps they can renew any flagging interest that can result from people getting tired of playing the same maps over and over. Halo 2's Killtacular and Bonus map packs (the latter of which was free) were the first notable pieces of DLC for a console title, and they didn't come out until five months after Halo 2 did. Fast-forward a few years and now we have games with DLC coming out on the same day as the game itself, and a lot of it is "microtransaction" stuff that costs more than it should. More often than not, microtransactions are not things that breathe new life into a game, but are simply examples of bribing your way to victory: paying real life cash money to unlock things early instead of grinding for/earning them. There are other examples of the concept of DLC being abused. Sometimes "Day-one DLC" isn't even DLC at all. They call it "on-disc DLC," but it's not really DLC since the content is on the game, not downloaded from a server. You have content on a game you bought that's locked behind a pay wall, and that is borderline unethical. Another example of bad DLC is pre-order bonuses: if you don't preorder, you get locked out of said content, perhaps forever. This is even worse for retailer-exclusive pre-order bonuses. You pre-ordered Halo 4 at Best Buy instead of Gamestop? Well, forget about that cool arctic camo skin for your BR. When devs and publishers abuse the concept of DLC like this, it comes across as nothing more than a cynical cash grab, especially if it's $2 here or $5 there for a little pay-to-win upgrade or to unlock things that are on the disc you just paid $60 for. Paid DLC should be something worthwhile, and nobody should ever feel excluded or otherwise punished for not forking out extra cash for content.
| |
|
| Replies: |
| Micro-transactions and character progression | pete_the_duck | 2/28/13 11:53 a.m. |
| Great read. | Gravemind | 2/28/13 6:40 p.m. |
| Re: Micro-transactions and character progression | Revenant1988 | 2/28/13 6:51 p.m. |
| Nice, Comments | Cody Miller | 3/1/13 2:16 a.m. |
| Re: Nice, Comments | Cody Miller | 3/1/13 2:19 a.m. |
The HBO Forum Archive is maintained with WebBBS 4.33. |