What you need to know
- As Dragon’s Dogma 2 launched on PC Thursday evening, a previously hidden suite of microtransactions became available for purchase.
- Things you can buy for the single player ARPG include fast travel points, Rift Crystals for hiring Pawns and buying special items, appearance change and revival consumables, a special camping kit that weighs less than normal ones, and a few others.
- In response to the microtransactions, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is being review bombed, with the game currently sitting at “Mostly Negative” on Steam.
Well. We, the gamers, get what we deserve. Did we purchase shit like this before? Yes.
Did we buy Skyrim’s horse-armour and started it all? Yes.
Do we now pay for cheat-codes in a 70-moneyz single-player-game? Also Yes.
Obviously, or companies would stop to come up with such turds coz it wouldn’t sell.
I will wait for a crack even though i couldn’t await this game. But this? Nooooo. It hurts my fefes.
I will die on the hill of “Oblivion’s horse armor DLC was not the beginning of micro transactions”
Because it wasn’t. There were micro transactions for games long before the hore armor thing. Also, horse armor was a one-time purchase for that mechanic.
Oblivion’s Horse Armor was probably the start of DLC though, maybe. At least with consoles?
It also had literally no game impact. It was purely cosmetic. There are far more egregious examples.
It was armor. It’s… of fucking course it had mechanical impact, that was the point. Only the color was cosmetic.
But mounted combat in Oblivion wasn’t really a thing, so your horse having armour never ended up mattering.
The first game I remember seeing MTX in was gunbound, a game that was like worms Armageddon. You could earn in game currency to buy equipment or you could spend a bit of real world money on them. And before that, gold farmers and their buyers would get banned in waves on WoW. I knew instantly when seeing the gunbound system that it would make money.
Personally, I always had contempt for anyone who would pay money to gain an advantage in a game, but the fact that they kept banning more farmers and buyers in WoW told me the demand was there even when it was risky, so when the game itself was selling that shit, it would do even better.
Though I can also thank Turok for N64 for teaching me that using cheats just increases the rate at which the game stops being fun. Paying to win would do the same thing, only it costs you money to ruin the game.
The currency-selling started way before wow too. In one mmo the money-spiral went so far the drain that people who played 8 or more accounts simultaneously were the tits. You had to buy a 2nd acc at the very least to be half-way competitive. It disgusted me so bad that i ultimately quit this otherwise beautiful game (dark age of camelot).
As to cheats. I love cheats and use them to my hearts desire. Be it to see everything on the first run (there are too many games in my backlog nowadays) or to make a fun 2nd run, or just to skip things i don’t enjoy (like carryweight in an rpg, me being a hoarder). I never cheated in online games of course. That would beat the purpose. Using denuvo anticheat on a singleplayergame just to make cheating impossible so that people buy their cheats… That’s where they can really suck my schlong and I’ll just pirate.
I think Double Dragon 3 unlocked certain moves depending on how many quarters you’ve put into the arcade machine. Also some of those cryptic NES games would have hint hotlines that would cost a ton of money, this stuff is old as hell.
Speak for yourself. I don’t buy any games with pay-to-win elements at all, And there are developers out there who are giving the correct example. Larian, for one. And Arrowhead is killing it with Helldivers II as well, which is another game that puts the player firstl and doesn’t try to nickle & dime you to death.
Lion king for super nes was kiiiiinda microtransactional (not really) cuz Disney made the game exceptionally hard on purpose so you had to rent it many times
Helldivers is as p2w as dragons dogma 2. Both currencies are earned in-game.
Not to mention the kernel level anti cheat there too.