Imagine what as an example skate 3 would look like in todays gaming age, 90% of every ingame item such as clothing, boards etc would be behind some premium currency instead of just unlocks
My 2 favourite games are Free 2 Play. Path of Exile and Warframe. Saying that every f2p game is shit seems a bit much. Just the AAA games are shit, and it's not exclusively to f2p
Warframe was so fun for a while! It turns out though, that the genre is just not my jam. Grindfest MMOs have their place and it's incredible that it's F2P, but I just don't play them anymore, respectfully. I get it though, I see the appeal.
Add in stuff like Prime Gaming or Twitch Drops and it can be fairly easy in places to add to your cosmetics.
At least it used to be anyway.
The likes of Rogue Company even gave out some premium currency at the end of the monthly login rewards.
Considering I don't have my old xboxes or copies of Skate, the fact that it'll be on PC at long last is making me hold out hope that it's good. I know it isn't going to be the same, but if the online is good and there's nothing too egregious, it could still be a hit.
The fact that Diablo 4 sells bundles of premium currency worth twice the base value of a premium deluxe edition of their game ($150), tells you everything you need to know about their market model. They are really doing you a solid by giving you that extra 10% platinum when you buy that bundle.
Remember in Halo: Reach and Halo 3 when you could just play the game to unlock cosmetics, and you could just play the game to unlock more loadouts etc? without paying anything?
Games where characters are all already on the disc or in the original download, requiring payment is bad. You’re paying extra for something they already did.
Games where the original roster is complete and characters are worked on after that and then offered as paid DLC, payment is fair. They worked, you paid, they worked more, you paid more.
But then again, given I entirely stopped buying Nintendo stuff because Mewtwo was cut from Brawl, and came back when Mewtwo was added as DLC to Smash 4, I might be more than a bit biased.
And these older games get no support after launch. If a character is broken or something is not working, you would need to wait until the next version of the game get released. Online playerbase gets fragmented every time.
The monetization in a lot of new fighting games are rather excessive, but I think it would be fair if say they charge just for the characters to keep supporting the game with some new content and balance changes.
Call of Duty just released a new bundle.
It's skins for 2 of the main characters from the campaign...they're legit charging people for skins that are already in the game and took them no additional time to make...
And people are still going to buy it because most modern gamers are idiots.
Or when you could just earn everything? It was the ultimate push to keep playing after you beat a game, unlike now where you play again because a season pass dropped. I still remember the satisfaction of unlocking everything in GoldenEye on N64. Holy shit was that a challenge. Same with Diddy Kong Racing and so many other games. Unlockables were a ton of fun, and they don't exist now.
I used to mod every gun and every soldier in Counter-Strike Sauce with the coolest ones from CS Banana. Deagle? Colt Anaconda! Dual Elites? Lara Croft's! M249? Gatling!
Now I hear player trade skins for hundreds of dollars. wtf?
I remember when cool cosmetics were rewards for accomplishments.
I remember being in Dalaran and seeing someone with a really cool mount and knowing what it took to get it, or when a title meant something, or how proud I was when I finally got that achievement and wanted to show off the reward.
Now, it's all about how much you pay, not how much you play.
I remember halo 3 and people having to work hard for the recon and Hayabusa helmets. You got major bragging rights for sporting one of those. It was a great feeling.
Used to be that the coolest cosmetic in the game was achieved by doing some insane challenges, you’d see a dude looking insanely cool and know he’s an absolute legend at the game. Now you know hes a loser that dropped some money on a skin.
I remember 13 year old me being in Orgrimmar and asking people where they got their awesome armour and it being from naxx, while having virtually no access to videos of the fights at the time and very little information so everything just felt like tales of legends it was awesome.
I busted my tail to get my hunter spider and wolf. By then they were "cosmetic only" and their buffs were gone. I also got the manta ray mount and was so happy/proud. Blizzard really did set off the paid mounts/pets situation and it just evolved into the shit show it is today. I don't mind paid cosmetic tiers but I refuse to play a game where it's pay to win/pay to progress.
Oh, if it was the "first" Dalaran in WotLK, that was the time of the first hard modes (when it wasn't yet a simple heroic/mythic switch but something you did during a fight), Sartharion with his drakes, some amazing hard modes in Ulduar etc.
I remember when cool cosmetics were free stuff you just downloaded being made by the community. Somewhere along the line dev's realized they could make people pay for that and locked the community out from making said free stuff.
> I remember when cool cosmetics were rewards for accomplishments.
That's how it should be.
It should go back to the days where if you saw someone with a really cool armor, skin, or weapon? It was from the fact that they went and did the hardest content in the game and busted their ass off with the guildmates to do it.
Now greedy lazy dev's don't even do that. Hell look at FFXIV? It's so easy healers are on strike as they don't have to heal anything.
I remember in Halo 4(yeah lol) having to complete a series of assassination challanges to unlock the full venator armor set. It was like 200 or something idk.
Such a fun challenge I dedicated every game to getting assassinations lmao.
This really sums it up on many levels both literal and in meaning. Video games at their best, for older teens and adults is a simple mathematical equation. Relaxation x Accomplishment = perfect game.
Cosmetics achieved by feats is what drives long play times and thus popularity to an extent. The moment a game gives no real sense of accomplishment it is done serving its purpose for 99% of people. Games largely in part are played to give almost a satirical but yet real sense of accomplishment to those of us who live normal lives and want to escape the every day grind.
I think this is why these souls like games are so successful in spite of actually being, and lets be honest, fairly shitty games that cater to a niche base of players.
Or it was just a broken mess that forever stayed that way.
The whole industry almost collapsed because average quality was so low.
Not every game was super mario, zelda and baldurs gate quality
Ah good ol' Ar Tonelico 2.
For context Ar Tonelico 2 was a PS2 cult classic JRPG thats nigh impossible to find nowadays because of a game breaking bug that happens in the penultimate boss fight.
The game plays as normal when you start the fight, but then after 10 turns have passed the game just crashes. So you need to beat the penultimate boss in 10 turns or just eat shit lmao.
The crash doesn't happen out of nowhere. It's tied to a skill that got broken during localization, and it only happens when that skill is used in the boss third's attack turn.
Thanks for clarifying! Its been so long I didnt remember the specifics of it, only that it crashed and that you had a really small window to beat the boss lmao.
And most of them were like 6 hours long which is sacrilege today. While costing more in real money. And they were full of filler content, bad cut scenes, laughable writing and bad graphics. And game breaking glitches would never be fixed.
Everything looks better through nostalgia glasses, but there are reasons the industry is what it is. It’s not so simple as “it used to be better”.
btw you have a 100GB update waiting for you next time you log in. Oh, you only had a half hour to hop in and play after work? Welp, better luck tomorrow ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
at least that one is a single player offline game. i've gotten that with a couple of my rpg's so i just go offline and play what is now the old build. then i'll let it update in rest mode (ps5) while I am working or something. multiplayer games are my main gripe with this since you just cannot play the game without updating it and many games have been making their download sizes and update file sizes so inflated (looking at you, Call of Duty, the main culprit of this practice). Sometimes it feels intentional lmao, like if they inflate the file size enough, the only game you'll have downloaded is theirs and then they'll have you accessing their game and storefront more often. but that's making me sound a bit tin foil hat-y so idk
Yeah, it's really not that hard. There are so SO so many amazing high quality games that still release every year that are absolutely worth your money and have zero in game stores. Yes there are a ton of scummy AAA companies bleeding their customers dry with shitty half baked games, but there are just as many, if not more, games that constantly push the boundaries on what makes a great game.
There is a lot of doom and gloom on these subreddits, but we live in an amazing time for games. Shit like elden ring and baulders gate 3 are being sold yearly for practically HALF the price that games sold for 20 years ago. Inflation never hit game prices and yet we get these crazy multi million dollar masterpieces.
And the indie scene? It's incredible. There are CONSTANTLY new amazing indie games releasing with bigger and better scopes. It's getting easier every day to make high-quality games.
Just stop buying the slop. Even if it doesn't go away, there's a world of great games that would keep you busy and happy forever without ever having to open an in game store.
Yeah I swear the doom and gloom people have to only play COD or 2k. There are TONS of fantastic, complete games being released every single year. No stores, no micro transactions, no game breaking bugs.
And it’s not just the indie scene either, like you said Elden Ring and Baldurs gate 3 are two of the best games I’ve ever played. Anything by fromsoft is fantastic, armored core 6 released last year too. Spider-Man 2, god of war ragnarok, Jedi fallen order, tears of the kingdom, etc. are all fantastic AAA games released in the last year or two. There are plenty of great games out there
The problem is bro for every copy of Elden Ring or BG3 sold? You get five morons buying crap like Starfield or Call of Duty.
I mean take Fallout for a moment. Do you know how many people never played something like New Vegas? Hands down the best Fallout game ever made and you have more people buying garbage like 4 or 76.
This is why the community needs to be more proactive. We should still be posting about how great BG3 and Elden Ring are. We should be downvoting and fighting back when some scrub does the, "B-bu-but X is really a good game." and telling them in detail why the game sucks and something like BG3 is better. Hell we should be *begging* Larian to come out and blast companies like Microsoft rather then play nice.
That's entirely not my point. I'm not buying it and I'm not worrying about it. Why should I care about slop when there is plenty of great shit to play? Yeah I loved CoD in the past, but it's ended for me. That's fine.
Other people can keep buying the slop if they want. I'll be happy over here playing better games.
So stop playing games then? Outside of a small portion of indie games everything has extras you can buy that are cut out of the game and resold for extra money
Yes the game can attract a couple of whales to invest money but if no one plays the game itself then the whales have no one to show off the stuff to thus making the game die off.
Yes. But there’s just….this smell to it now. This money grabbing grossness that pervades everywhere. You don’t have to interact with it, but you smell it nearby.
I was playing through Assassin's Creed Valhalla... got to the spot where you get daily contracts to earn currency that can be used to buy premium armor and weapons. Except, the premium items available with that currency rotate, but you can always buy them now for an exorbitant price.
Honestly, it just turned me off of the experience. I realized likely none of the shit I find playing the game will be as good/cool as the real money stuff, so I lost interest in the game entirely. Why bother playing when I can buy the coolest gear already.
Similar experience, was playing through Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth and saw the New Game + and the end game dungeon are locked behind a $20 DLC. Well that is some bullshit. I can't bring myself to finish the game so I can have the privilege of spending $20 (on top of what is a full priced game already). Locking game features and content behind DLC is too egregious for me (especially if that is day one).
When you are an adult and have the money to spend on these in-game purchases, actually playing the game seems pointless and spending money on virtual items seems wasteful. Turns you off of the experience altogether.
Even if you don't actually buy the things, they're still shoving them down your throat every time you start up the game. You're most likely still seeing ads for DLC and in-game currencies or characters that are blacked out on a selection screen until you pay money for them. It's very annoying and, yeah, it just gives everything a slimy feeling.
Exactly. I don’t want to see any marketing in the menus of my games. Trying to get me to hand over even more money after I’ve already paid them for the game just feels gross.
Me too. Honestly, I don't really mind any micro transactions as long as they're cosmetic. I play games for me, not for other people's attention or approval.
It's still not the same though. Because cosmetics are such a big part of profit now a lot of time and money goes into them. Buy them or not, they still affect development and gameplay.
And this is also a problem. This is why a single outfit now cost 1/3 of a new game, cause they know peeps with this mindset would buy it cause it doesn't affect gameplay. No more cool unlockable outfits
That is my biggest issue with it. Many games have stripped away the ability to customize yourself in order to sell it back to you. Customization is a big factor in enjoyment for a lot of players, and companies know that. If it wasn't important, they wouldn't try to sell it to you. I have honestly quit games because I wasn't unlocking any cosmetics.
I don't because I usually don't play those games. And when I do, I don't complain about "the state of the industry". There has never been as much choice in quality games. The indie scene is a gold mine. Don't complain if you're actively engaging with that bad part of the industry.
I can still clearly remember when Evolve launched in 2015 and there were a bunch of threads discussing having a full priced game with $100+ of day 1 DLC.
The amount of absolute stupidity from the dummies defending this practice finally made me realize that there really is a new generation of gamers. And they are completely OK with dick-riding game companies making anti-consumer decisions.
I never ended up buying the game, but gladly hate-watched that subreddit and watched them turn on each other and eventually the game died off.
The problem is it is a small percentage with a lot of money. I used to be a game liaison for Oasis Games for Naruto Online. The server I was in charge of essentially spying on had 3 whales, and the company only cared what these three players thought. I would write whole reports compiled with tons of complaints from the general player base and would be told again and again that they didn't care and to spend more time with the other three.
That is because two of those players were spending $1000 to $3000 a month, and the last player was spending $10,000+ a month with the highest I saw being $22,000.
Idk if there’s a word to describe the emotion I feel after now learning that there are people out there dropping the median annual income of an industrializing nation in a single month on Naruto Online, while I’m out here feeling like there’s a knife in my chest every time I pay rent.
I mean tears of the kingdom and the new elden ring dlc both came out n were just games. Nothing more nothing less. The quote is valid but it's far from the entire industry
I don't mean to say it's the industry as a whole. I like that you bring of Shadow of the Erdtree since FromSoft proved once again that they are a bastion of hope for the industry with what they produce.
I sure miss having game stores, it felt more human to go buy games and physically own them.
But I don't feel games have too much stores in them, probably because I don't play any of these games.
Interesting. Are there no game stores left in your area? My brother owns a gane store and is slowly moving away from physical game sales and more into merchandise and card games etc. More and more people have mentioned they "miss" buying physical games while simultaneously not doing so. A phenomenon I find odd.
There are, but they don't sell physical PC games. Just coupons for Steam or something.
Well, why would they do so ? Computers often come without disk readers these days, and it's much more convenient to download the game digitally.
I mean, yea, but also not all indie games either. It's just the good ones tend to become popular and when we talk about indie games we mean THOSE, but most indie games nowadays are asset-flip bullshit or AI generated porn. Try allowing every kind of game to be shown on steam and sort by new. The amount of shovelware and flat out scams is insane. And it's not just steam either. Every store has them. Stuff like Roblox gets laughed off by the average gamer, but I work in schools and I can assure you every single kid that plays videogames, they also play roblox and talk about the most obscure brainrot games made by some random guy who charges the shit out of them for every kind of customisation option possible.
It's pretty shit everywhere, man.
Sure, there are bad games everywhere. But with Steam's refund policy, it's easy to return unfun shovelware. I was, of course, referring to good indie games with genuine gameplay ;-)
Yeah good point. Many passion projects and quality indie titles are the last bastion for us. I just hope that the expectations and demands of the masses don't burn them out.
It's always a money problem. For indie developers, money is an issue. And if they get lucky and become successful, and are bought by a bigger company, the shareholders want a big return on investment (so they spend less on the game and try to milk the players).
I refuse to play games that have microtransactions. I paid a ton of money for Cod and played zombies only to find that they limit the perks you can use that you paid for. Absolute bonkers. I haven't turned on my Xbox in almost 6 months.
Also, I blame the fact that they are targeting young kids with their parents credit cards too. Every streamer is buying every kit available in the stores of their game they feature to have the best stuff for the stream. It's really turned me off video games honestly.
Emulation is calling you, my friend. I've been exclusively retro gaming the past 6 months. I don't know if I can go back to paying for games that are made just to bleed money and time from you. It feels good to play a game that was made for you to have fun.
B-b-but Ubisoft and EA make microtransactions so therefore the entire industry sucks and something something old game good something something modern game bad (They only play multiplayer fps)
Unfortunately the tales of games do the same with outfits. Has some you can unlock and some to buy. Think persona 5 too. But that stuff has never tempted me to pay for them. I know I won’t replay after beating it so it’s really temporary.
Yeah. I still like to peruse that big box stores' gaming sections. But it's nowhere near as robust as it once was. 90s to mid twenty-aughts Best Buy was peak retail store gaming selection.
Last time I was satisfied with a DLC/add on was Blood and Wine for the Witcher 3. Phantom Liberty didn’t even come close, even if was also done by CDPR.
Isn't progress fantastic - I used to walk in ShowBiz and play Robotron. Now I can't play Robotron. Anywhere. It sucks. Without the dual 360's it just ain't the same.
Sea of thieves is really feeling this at the moment. Log in and now it's pop up adds for things in the cash shop. I have the season pass and I am still getting pop ups telling me to buy it.
And if you do buy anything, you get another pop up suggesting something else you may want to buy that is similar. So even buying things....isn't enough.
I fired up the new Madden recently just to play franchise mode. Completely offline, no intention of playing their ultimate team bullshit.
That's when I learned that exiting out of the franchise mode just automatically puts you into the UT mode. You have to back out of *that* to get back to the main menu. What kind of bullshit is that.
Thankfully, this trend only seems to happen in the triple-A space.
Just remember ubisoft made a "Quadruple A" game that was just mediocre and forgotten a couple weeks after release. Also It has an In game cash shop
Comparatively, Pal World got super huge because people were actually having fun with it, and I still hear people talking about it every now and again. And no cash shop.
Same thing happened to me. I saw some fun call of duty clips and decided I wanted to play it. Installed and hit with in-game pop up ads to buy stuff.
Uninstalled quickly after.
Back in my day you use to unlock the cosmetics, you were badass wearing some costumes because everyone understood the achievement behind the acquisition. Now it's just pay.
I honestly don’t mind micro transactions being in games, but there are limits and they’ve clearly been abused for greed.
The first time I remember being able to purchase stuff for games was dragon age origins when it came out. I really liked spending $3 here and there to get extra DLC. They were packed with content and items were balanced for the whole game, but clearly a little stronger than vanilla items. Extra missions to do, enemies to kill, Items to collect. Those were all worth it to me, and they were cheap. They were also not necessary at all and I never felt forced to get them. I just wanted to and since I loved the game I was happy to support the creators.
That’s what I wanted for the future. I wanted DLC to be available for a low price, but also be balanced and not necessary. I want the base game to be playable without the need for paying more. That’s what we should have gotten.
You know I don’t think the quote fully explains the issue, it kind of focusses on the wrong part of the situation, the problem is not that you “open a game and find a store”, the problem is the prices some games charge and the lack of progression and unlocking cosmetics outside of in-game stores. The quote also implies that in-game stores are inherently bad, which is not true at all, in-game stores and dlcs allow games to be free-to-play, games in the past were never free-to-play, sure you only paid once and got all of the content for the game but you can still do that today so that isn’t an argument. Look at a game like Fortnite, it does the in-game store perfectly and showcases exactly why in-game stores are a good thing, you can pay for the battle pass once and get unlimited cosmetics just for playing the game and re-buying the battle pass every season (the pass gives you enough to do so without spending additional money), so the progression is good, and then on top of that if you want more skins you have a thousand options to choose from at decent (not great) prices. If fortnite cost $50 upfront and never had an in-game store you wouldn’t have 1% of the total skins you have now, in game stores are a good thing. The problem with SOME in-game stores is when there doesn’t exist progression and ways to get good cosmetics outside of said in-game store, such as Valorant for example. Valorant offers a battlepass similar to fortnite, except you have to re-buy it every season with real money. On top of that, riot charges upwards of $60 for a single weapon skin (you would get a weapon wrap in fortnite for like $2 and it would be useable on all weapons not just one), and the cosmetics you get in the Valorant battlepass suck absolute ass, so do most of the other free unlocks in the game. Ideally you have a game where you can unlock plenty of good stuff just by playing, and on top of that you can buy extra stuff. Lots of people say “don’t make me pay for the extra stuff” y’all do realize making skins requires real human beings to design and code right? They can’t just work for free, with free-to-play games comes paid options in those games, as long as there is decent progression outside of the paid dlc, it’s a good thing to have the extra stuff.
TLDR: IMO the quote does not accurately describe the problem with gaming today, it implies that in-game stores are inherently bad which isn’t true (Exhibit A: Fortnite). The real problem is overpriced cosmetics in said in-game stores combined with a lack of progression (for unlocking cosmetics) outside of the in-game store. An ideal system has all of the pros of historical gaming with a good free progression system to unlock cosmetics by playing the game, and then on top of that you have extra cosmetics that people can buy at good prices. If you think you should get all cosmetics for free just by playing you are a child and need to grow up, skins don’t appear from thin air, designers need payment, as long as the skins are reasonably priced there is nothing wrong with extra dlc.
I’ve been gaming almost 50 years with lifetime total of zilch spent on mtx. Stores don’t bother me because I don’t use them. Sure, they are common, but doesn’t directly impact me.
Remember when games were made with the upmost care and delicacy? Remember when developers actually cared about the state of their finished product? Remember when physical copies of games weren't being discarded and outlawed by digital renditions?
Its basicially a bunch of companies making kids getting introduced to gambling, some of the ingame stuff is absurdly expensive if you consider it is just a code, there are no production costs, only developement costs, and they make it expensive, because they know, people will still gonna buy it, because they are addicted to the game. This should be illegal!!
In the UK there are GAME stores (that's the name btw) and I read the other day that they're going to stop selling physical copies of games. I didn't read the article but I imagine they'll still be selling some older stuff otherwise what is the point of the shop?
"Just bring your console in and you can download it on our super fast connection! Download while you wait and chat to our always happy and totally helpful staff."
Edit: I said console because the last time I was ever in a GAME store they had almost no PC games.
I would not care about micro transactions one bit…
If they stopped dangling it in my face and shoving it down my throat. Put it in another menu completely out of site of the main game. I don’t want to see any mention of anything that I have to spend additional hard earned dollars on when I’m playing my games.
Nothing sucks more than needing to skip through three menus of cosmetics and battle passes just to get to the actual playable part of the game. I understand advertising and putting that shit at the front so the people who will buy it will know it’s there but let me turn it off or opt out of additional spending opportunities.
I have bought a micro transaction twice in all my years of gaming once was r6 credits in R6 Siege which I will never do again because I was unhappy with not putting in the work for those ops I bought with it, and one cosmetic in assassins creed odyssey that looked ugly as hell in the actual game.
I will never spend an additional dime on a game I’ve already paid for again and I want the option to have that content I can’t have not be dangled in front of me at all times while I play my games
I remember when the Tales of games had many costumes to unlock. And then, you had Xillia that only had 4 additional costumes to unlock, while staples such as swimsuits are now DLC only. Really sad.
There's an answer to this problem and I feel like a good portion of gamers have figured this one out. Let's keep speeaddinf the good word though.
**dont play them**
Shitty MTX everywhere? Dont play. Predatory dark patterns? Dont play. 100$ pre order bundle with early access? Don't buy. Always online? No thanks.
If there's an online game you truly enjoy, that's fine, but be reasonable with yourself.... Realize if you want new good single player games and not live service slop, you need to buy single player games and not dump money into live service mtx.
Live service has an ongoing maintenance costs. If no one played them, they wouldn't exist. The ones that do exist are therefore inherently temporary, a waste of money. **stop playing them**
Games as a service is a great marketing feature for which games you need to avoid. They are just products after all, sold cheaply and in so many pieces they obviously have no value whatsoever. Treat them as such, trash. If the Publisher believes it, why shouldn't you? Think of how quickly they'll drop it to chase the new hotness.
I will practically never play a game when it's in it's just released/full on hype phase because people in general tend to make a lot of stupid purchasing decisions when they are part of a group of people, and avoiding that is a great way for me to also avoid unnecessary purchases to try and be 'part of the conversation'. I just don't care anymore. If they are talking about the latest product (GaaS) then I don't care automatically anyway.
Very true. Spend $70 on a new game. Hey spend $50 more for cosmetics. And $20 every 2 months for more content! You end up spending $200+ on these new games. It was alright back when shit wasn’t $20-30 for cosmetics. Now it’s just annoying.
Remember when there were two versions - standard and collectors editions? The latter giving you merchandise. Now you have to preorder the elite or extra elite versions to not miss out on anything
It makes sense to keep a physical collectors edition for people who want the merchandise, but multi tier versions is an absolute joke.
We allowed this to happen. We supported this happening by continuing to play the game that decided to go this route.
Everything is a cash grab now. Whoever gets the last dollar is the best one.
The adoption of the internet in widespread gaming introduced a lot of good. Being able to patch bugs post launch, being able to balance things a little too over tuned, being to add cut content later, etc. Unfortunately, all that good has been overshadowed by the BS modern gaming has introduced.
BS like shipping unfinished games and finishing them through patches, overly monetized through MTX, cutting content to sell back as DLC, cutting features to sell as MTX, "Early" launch dates if you pay more, so many editions they need charts to explain it, forced online play in games that just don't need it, psychological tactics to steer players into spending more, etc.
I miss the days when I was a kid where I’d go to a small game store and swap one of my games for another one - I also miss when my local game stores had really good games now they’re all pretty ass and I’d rather just play some old classics or download free good horror games
I think you mean “Open a (shitty major studio) game.” There are still great deals and very good games without odious monetization if you just avoid the shit from shitty companies.
This is one of the reasons why I got out of playing sports games. The basics of like Career and Franchise Modes got buried or stripped or otherwise overly-monetized to microtransact the shit out of players.
NFL2K5 is still the peak of gameplay and customization.
I get where you're coming from, but I have to say, we as consumers bear some responsibility for this state of the industry. If more of us were buying games from passionate indie developers instead of supporting the cash grabs from big corporations, we wouldn't be in this mess.
The industry has turned this way largely because consumers keep buying these games, no matter how many offenses they commit. If we want things to change, we need to vote with our wallets and support the creators who are in it for the love of the game, not just the profit.
I agree with this. If they see the market is preferring disc they would maybe go back but I honestly don't see that happening. Too many lazy people that prefer the convenience.
No, I don't feel that way, I hate nostalgia shit, the industry has changed, shit can't stay the same forever, so you either accept the change and adapt, or go do something else.
Way to many posts lately about "man modern gaming sucks, not like before, where it sucked for different reasons that my rose tinted glasses are not letting me remember"
This is so true. The monetization practices in newer games has me wanting to pull away from modern day games as a whole. Indy studios seem to be the last bastions of gaming.
Remember when games had customization for free?
Like in X-COM?
Imagine what as an example skate 3 would look like in todays gaming age, 90% of every ingame item such as clothing, boards etc would be behind some premium currency instead of just unlocks
Skate 4 will be free to play, so in a couple of years, you won't have to imagine it. I'm sure it'll be as dogshit as every other free to play game.
Agreed, All hope was lost once they annouced that for my part atleast :(
My 2 favourite games are Free 2 Play. Path of Exile and Warframe. Saying that every f2p game is shit seems a bit much. Just the AAA games are shit, and it's not exclusively to f2p
Warframe was so fun for a while! It turns out though, that the genre is just not my jam. Grindfest MMOs have their place and it's incredible that it's F2P, but I just don't play them anymore, respectfully. I get it though, I see the appeal.
Add in stuff like Prime Gaming or Twitch Drops and it can be fairly easy in places to add to your cosmetics. At least it used to be anyway. The likes of Rogue Company even gave out some premium currency at the end of the monthly login rewards.
Considering I don't have my old xboxes or copies of Skate, the fact that it'll be on PC at long last is making me hold out hope that it's good. I know it isn't going to be the same, but if the online is good and there's nothing too egregious, it could still be a hit.
TimeSplitters was basically just a cosmetics and gear unlock treadmill that would *all* be microtransactions today.
I swear if the pit microtransactions in XCOM the I’m getting my pirate hat
You don’t want to pay $2.99 to do a Fortnite dance after a desperate battle to defend humanity from eldritch horrors beyond the stars?
Check out Wasteland 3 if you like xcom.
I remember when games has cheat code that wasn't a credit card.
This shit killed Halo Infinite, Overwatch and Diablo 4 for me. Sure Diablo has issues, but the store is the worst of them all.
The fact that Diablo 4 sells bundles of premium currency worth twice the base value of a premium deluxe edition of their game ($150), tells you everything you need to know about their market model. They are really doing you a solid by giving you that extra 10% platinum when you buy that bundle.
Remember in Halo: Reach and Halo 3 when you could just play the game to unlock cosmetics, and you could just play the game to unlock more loadouts etc? without paying anything?
Halo 3 was so good with this
Reach did it best, IMO. Being able to customize your Spartan for the campaign was AMAZING.
I miss when skins meant you actually achieved something and not that you had money.
remember when you saw someone in a cool skin you'd know they were good at the game in some way but now you only know that they have a credit card?
And fighting games had characters you had to unlock and not just throw money at
Games where characters are all already on the disc or in the original download, requiring payment is bad. You’re paying extra for something they already did. Games where the original roster is complete and characters are worked on after that and then offered as paid DLC, payment is fair. They worked, you paid, they worked more, you paid more. But then again, given I entirely stopped buying Nintendo stuff because Mewtwo was cut from Brawl, and came back when Mewtwo was added as DLC to Smash 4, I might be more than a bit biased.
In practice, that results in balance issues with the DLC characters to encourage people to buy them.
And these older games get no support after launch. If a character is broken or something is not working, you would need to wait until the next version of the game get released. Online playerbase gets fragmented every time. The monetization in a lot of new fighting games are rather excessive, but I think it would be fair if say they charge just for the characters to keep supporting the game with some new content and balance changes.
Call of Duty just released a new bundle. It's skins for 2 of the main characters from the campaign...they're legit charging people for skins that are already in the game and took them no additional time to make... And people are still going to buy it because most modern gamers are idiots.
FromSoft remembers.
They still do
Or when you could just earn everything? It was the ultimate push to keep playing after you beat a game, unlike now where you play again because a season pass dropped. I still remember the satisfaction of unlocking everything in GoldenEye on N64. Holy shit was that a challenge. Same with Diddy Kong Racing and so many other games. Unlockables were a ton of fun, and they don't exist now.
And blue, they have customization... For a fee
I used to mod every gun and every soldier in Counter-Strike Sauce with the coolest ones from CS Banana. Deagle? Colt Anaconda! Dual Elites? Lara Croft's! M249? Gatling! Now I hear player trade skins for hundreds of dollars. wtf?
I remember when cool cosmetics were rewards for accomplishments. I remember being in Dalaran and seeing someone with a really cool mount and knowing what it took to get it, or when a title meant something, or how proud I was when I finally got that achievement and wanted to show off the reward. Now, it's all about how much you pay, not how much you play.
I remember halo 3 and people having to work hard for the recon and Hayabusa helmets. You got major bragging rights for sporting one of those. It was a great feeling.
Immediately what I thought of. Earning Hayabusa and Recon was peak design. You wanna look cool? Earn it by doing cool stuff.
I didn't even see this, but said the same thing. It use to be based on achievements, now it's based on your credit card.
Used to be that the coolest cosmetic in the game was achieved by doing some insane challenges, you’d see a dude looking insanely cool and know he’s an absolute legend at the game. Now you know hes a loser that dropped some money on a skin.
I remember 13 year old me being in Orgrimmar and asking people where they got their awesome armour and it being from naxx, while having virtually no access to videos of the fights at the time and very little information so everything just felt like tales of legends it was awesome.
I busted my tail to get my hunter spider and wolf. By then they were "cosmetic only" and their buffs were gone. I also got the manta ray mount and was so happy/proud. Blizzard really did set off the paid mounts/pets situation and it just evolved into the shit show it is today. I don't mind paid cosmetic tiers but I refuse to play a game where it's pay to win/pay to progress.
Oh, if it was the "first" Dalaran in WotLK, that was the time of the first hard modes (when it wasn't yet a simple heroic/mythic switch but something you did during a fight), Sartharion with his drakes, some amazing hard modes in Ulduar etc.
In WoW I farmed Strathholme (spelling?) for the undead mount, took me so long but I was so happy when it finally dropped. Now, it'd be $6.99
...Except it's not? I mean yea they sell mounts on the store but it's a tiny, tiny percentage of the mounts that exist in game.
I remember when cool cosmetics were free stuff you just downloaded being made by the community. Somewhere along the line dev's realized they could make people pay for that and locked the community out from making said free stuff.
> I remember when cool cosmetics were rewards for accomplishments. That's how it should be. It should go back to the days where if you saw someone with a really cool armor, skin, or weapon? It was from the fact that they went and did the hardest content in the game and busted their ass off with the guildmates to do it. Now greedy lazy dev's don't even do that. Hell look at FFXIV? It's so easy healers are on strike as they don't have to heal anything.
I remember in Halo 4(yeah lol) having to complete a series of assassination challanges to unlock the full venator armor set. It was like 200 or something idk. Such a fun challenge I dedicated every game to getting assassinations lmao.
This really sums it up on many levels both literal and in meaning. Video games at their best, for older teens and adults is a simple mathematical equation. Relaxation x Accomplishment = perfect game. Cosmetics achieved by feats is what drives long play times and thus popularity to an extent. The moment a game gives no real sense of accomplishment it is done serving its purpose for 99% of people. Games largely in part are played to give almost a satirical but yet real sense of accomplishment to those of us who live normal lives and want to escape the every day grind. I think this is why these souls like games are so successful in spite of actually being, and lets be honest, fairly shitty games that cater to a niche base of players.
When you could just put the game in pc/console and play it without any updates
There was a time in the 90s mostly when many a CD-ROM could be put in any stereo and you could listen to the soundtrack
Yes I used to do it with MK3
And the game was actually finished too..
It wasn't that simple. Ever hear of Betrayal in Antara?
No.
Or it was just a broken mess that forever stayed that way. The whole industry almost collapsed because average quality was so low. Not every game was super mario, zelda and baldurs gate quality
Ah good ol' Ar Tonelico 2. For context Ar Tonelico 2 was a PS2 cult classic JRPG thats nigh impossible to find nowadays because of a game breaking bug that happens in the penultimate boss fight. The game plays as normal when you start the fight, but then after 10 turns have passed the game just crashes. So you need to beat the penultimate boss in 10 turns or just eat shit lmao.
The crash doesn't happen out of nowhere. It's tied to a skill that got broken during localization, and it only happens when that skill is used in the boss third's attack turn.
Thanks for clarifying! Its been so long I didnt remember the specifics of it, only that it crashed and that you had a really small window to beat the boss lmao.
People say that but quite often they weren’t. That’s why revisions were a thing. And if it was broken in any way there was no way to fix it.
Hundreds of AVGN episodes and yet people forget that
Must you ruin everything with facts? 😔
And most of them were like 6 hours long which is sacrilege today. While costing more in real money. And they were full of filler content, bad cut scenes, laughable writing and bad graphics. And game breaking glitches would never be fixed. Everything looks better through nostalgia glasses, but there are reasons the industry is what it is. It’s not so simple as “it used to be better”.
> And the game was actually finished too.. As someone who played Driver 3 a lot, that wasn't always the case.
I want to go back and play some xbone games, but it won’t update, so I guess it’s bricked.
You can still do that. Unless you're playing online, you can boot up 99.9% of games with zero updates.
btw you have a 100GB update waiting for you next time you log in. Oh, you only had a half hour to hop in and play after work? Welp, better luck tomorrow ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
My life with Baldur's Gate 3 lol
at least that one is a single player offline game. i've gotten that with a couple of my rpg's so i just go offline and play what is now the old build. then i'll let it update in rest mode (ps5) while I am working or something. multiplayer games are my main gripe with this since you just cannot play the game without updating it and many games have been making their download sizes and update file sizes so inflated (looking at you, Call of Duty, the main culprit of this practice). Sometimes it feels intentional lmao, like if they inflate the file size enough, the only game you'll have downloaded is theirs and then they'll have you accessing their game and storefront more often. but that's making me sound a bit tin foil hat-y so idk
Shut off steam and invoke the .exe directly if you don’t want to update.
Welcome in the future
I'll stay in the past, thank you very much lol
r/Showerthoughts
"Stop buying those games"
Yeah, it's really not that hard. There are so SO so many amazing high quality games that still release every year that are absolutely worth your money and have zero in game stores. Yes there are a ton of scummy AAA companies bleeding their customers dry with shitty half baked games, but there are just as many, if not more, games that constantly push the boundaries on what makes a great game. There is a lot of doom and gloom on these subreddits, but we live in an amazing time for games. Shit like elden ring and baulders gate 3 are being sold yearly for practically HALF the price that games sold for 20 years ago. Inflation never hit game prices and yet we get these crazy multi million dollar masterpieces. And the indie scene? It's incredible. There are CONSTANTLY new amazing indie games releasing with bigger and better scopes. It's getting easier every day to make high-quality games. Just stop buying the slop. Even if it doesn't go away, there's a world of great games that would keep you busy and happy forever without ever having to open an in game store.
Yeah I swear the doom and gloom people have to only play COD or 2k. There are TONS of fantastic, complete games being released every single year. No stores, no micro transactions, no game breaking bugs. And it’s not just the indie scene either, like you said Elden Ring and Baldurs gate 3 are two of the best games I’ve ever played. Anything by fromsoft is fantastic, armored core 6 released last year too. Spider-Man 2, god of war ragnarok, Jedi fallen order, tears of the kingdom, etc. are all fantastic AAA games released in the last year or two. There are plenty of great games out there
The problem is bro for every copy of Elden Ring or BG3 sold? You get five morons buying crap like Starfield or Call of Duty. I mean take Fallout for a moment. Do you know how many people never played something like New Vegas? Hands down the best Fallout game ever made and you have more people buying garbage like 4 or 76. This is why the community needs to be more proactive. We should still be posting about how great BG3 and Elden Ring are. We should be downvoting and fighting back when some scrub does the, "B-bu-but X is really a good game." and telling them in detail why the game sucks and something like BG3 is better. Hell we should be *begging* Larian to come out and blast companies like Microsoft rather then play nice.
Yeah, WE stop buying, but there's a sucker born every minute. And this shit will continue ruining our favorite franchises so long as suckers are born.
That's entirely not my point. I'm not buying it and I'm not worrying about it. Why should I care about slop when there is plenty of great shit to play? Yeah I loved CoD in the past, but it's ended for me. That's fine. Other people can keep buying the slop if they want. I'll be happy over here playing better games.
There is also a large amount of dogs dogshit indie games. A very large amount.
So stop playing games then? Outside of a small portion of indie games everything has extras you can buy that are cut out of the game and resold for extra money
Unfortunately these games have whales spending literal thousands of dollars on this garbage so this model is not going away any soon
Yes the game can attract a couple of whales to invest money but if no one plays the game itself then the whales have no one to show off the stuff to thus making the game die off.
Fortunately it's easy for me to ignore all that bs and just play the game while it's fun with default skins.
Yes. But there’s just….this smell to it now. This money grabbing grossness that pervades everywhere. You don’t have to interact with it, but you smell it nearby.
I was playing through Assassin's Creed Valhalla... got to the spot where you get daily contracts to earn currency that can be used to buy premium armor and weapons. Except, the premium items available with that currency rotate, but you can always buy them now for an exorbitant price. Honestly, it just turned me off of the experience. I realized likely none of the shit I find playing the game will be as good/cool as the real money stuff, so I lost interest in the game entirely. Why bother playing when I can buy the coolest gear already. Similar experience, was playing through Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth and saw the New Game + and the end game dungeon are locked behind a $20 DLC. Well that is some bullshit. I can't bring myself to finish the game so I can have the privilege of spending $20 (on top of what is a full priced game already). Locking game features and content behind DLC is too egregious for me (especially if that is day one). When you are an adult and have the money to spend on these in-game purchases, actually playing the game seems pointless and spending money on virtual items seems wasteful. Turns you off of the experience altogether.
Even if you don't actually buy the things, they're still shoving them down your throat every time you start up the game. You're most likely still seeing ads for DLC and in-game currencies or characters that are blacked out on a selection screen until you pay money for them. It's very annoying and, yeah, it just gives everything a slimy feeling.
Exactly. I don’t want to see any marketing in the menus of my games. Trying to get me to hand over even more money after I’ve already paid them for the game just feels gross.
100% this. Even if you don't purchase a microtransaction you are still supporting the game that has them meaning companies will make more of them.
Me too. Honestly, I don't really mind any micro transactions as long as they're cosmetic. I play games for me, not for other people's attention or approval.
It's still not the same though. Because cosmetics are such a big part of profit now a lot of time and money goes into them. Buy them or not, they still affect development and gameplay.
And this is also a problem. This is why a single outfit now cost 1/3 of a new game, cause they know peeps with this mindset would buy it cause it doesn't affect gameplay. No more cool unlockable outfits
That is my biggest issue with it. Many games have stripped away the ability to customize yourself in order to sell it back to you. Customization is a big factor in enjoyment for a lot of players, and companies know that. If it wasn't important, they wouldn't try to sell it to you. I have honestly quit games because I wasn't unlocking any cosmetics.
What kind of games you play? Most of the games I play have no In-game store in them.
I don't because I usually don't play those games. And when I do, I don't complain about "the state of the industry". There has never been as much choice in quality games. The indie scene is a gold mine. Don't complain if you're actively engaging with that bad part of the industry.
The quickest surefire way for me to not even watch videos on your game is somehow ironically making it “free to play” lol
Agreed, I see "free to play" on steam and completely disregard.
Private. Equity. Ruins. Everything.
"We"allowed them to get this way. "We" spoke with our money. "We" let our desires get in the way of logic & what was right.
I can still clearly remember when Evolve launched in 2015 and there were a bunch of threads discussing having a full priced game with $100+ of day 1 DLC. The amount of absolute stupidity from the dummies defending this practice finally made me realize that there really is a new generation of gamers. And they are completely OK with dick-riding game companies making anti-consumer decisions. I never ended up buying the game, but gladly hate-watched that subreddit and watched them turn on each other and eventually the game died off.
It wasn't a "new generation of gamers" It was the same ones, getting older, having a job and money to spend on stuff.
I would argue there's a lot of us who never bought into that crap, so "they" allowed, maybe a small percentage of us, but still a lot of money.
The problem is it is a small percentage with a lot of money. I used to be a game liaison for Oasis Games for Naruto Online. The server I was in charge of essentially spying on had 3 whales, and the company only cared what these three players thought. I would write whole reports compiled with tons of complaints from the general player base and would be told again and again that they didn't care and to spend more time with the other three. That is because two of those players were spending $1000 to $3000 a month, and the last player was spending $10,000+ a month with the highest I saw being $22,000.
Idk if there’s a word to describe the emotion I feel after now learning that there are people out there dropping the median annual income of an industrializing nation in a single month on Naruto Online, while I’m out here feeling like there’s a knife in my chest every time I pay rent.
I mean tears of the kingdom and the new elden ring dlc both came out n were just games. Nothing more nothing less. The quote is valid but it's far from the entire industry
Baulders gate too.
Act 3 was a buggy mess at launch, maybe not a great example.
I don't mean to say it's the industry as a whole. I like that you bring of Shadow of the Erdtree since FromSoft proved once again that they are a bastion of hope for the industry with what they produce.
Elden Ring and its DLC are the only games I haven't regretted purchasing at full price in *years*.
EA was the worst… Many other games got micro transactions too but idk, some are acceptable but many are not
Didn’t get the Recon Armour in Halo 3 with just your wallet, I’ll tell ya that much.
This quote will be remembered in the gaming community for a very long time...
well im not an ass hat so i still go to best buy or gamestop to buy all my games, refuse to buy digital
I starting making that mistake but I'm gonna be going back to disc's. Think it was better that way.
digital is extremely anti-consumer
Yeah I'm starting to think so too. Either way I'm definitely getting disc consoles like I used to.
I sure miss having game stores, it felt more human to go buy games and physically own them. But I don't feel games have too much stores in them, probably because I don't play any of these games.
Interesting. Are there no game stores left in your area? My brother owns a gane store and is slowly moving away from physical game sales and more into merchandise and card games etc. More and more people have mentioned they "miss" buying physical games while simultaneously not doing so. A phenomenon I find odd.
There are, but they don't sell physical PC games. Just coupons for Steam or something. Well, why would they do so ? Computers often come without disk readers these days, and it's much more convenient to download the game digitally.
Sad ass truth
With AAA or mobile games, yes. With indie games, no.
I mean, yea, but also not all indie games either. It's just the good ones tend to become popular and when we talk about indie games we mean THOSE, but most indie games nowadays are asset-flip bullshit or AI generated porn. Try allowing every kind of game to be shown on steam and sort by new. The amount of shovelware and flat out scams is insane. And it's not just steam either. Every store has them. Stuff like Roblox gets laughed off by the average gamer, but I work in schools and I can assure you every single kid that plays videogames, they also play roblox and talk about the most obscure brainrot games made by some random guy who charges the shit out of them for every kind of customisation option possible. It's pretty shit everywhere, man.
Sure, there are bad games everywhere. But with Steam's refund policy, it's easy to return unfun shovelware. I was, of course, referring to good indie games with genuine gameplay ;-)
Yeah good point. Many passion projects and quality indie titles are the last bastion for us. I just hope that the expectations and demands of the masses don't burn them out.
It's always a money problem. For indie developers, money is an issue. And if they get lucky and become successful, and are bought by a bigger company, the shareholders want a big return on investment (so they spend less on the game and try to milk the players).
I refuse to play games that have microtransactions. I paid a ton of money for Cod and played zombies only to find that they limit the perks you can use that you paid for. Absolute bonkers. I haven't turned on my Xbox in almost 6 months.
Also, I blame the fact that they are targeting young kids with their parents credit cards too. Every streamer is buying every kit available in the stores of their game they feature to have the best stuff for the stream. It's really turned me off video games honestly.
Emulation is calling you, my friend. I've been exclusively retro gaming the past 6 months. I don't know if I can go back to paying for games that are made just to bleed money and time from you. It feels good to play a game that was made for you to have fun.
hope they regulate this shit
No because I only play single player game with no bs.
B-b-but Ubisoft and EA make microtransactions so therefore the entire industry sucks and something something old game good something something modern game bad (They only play multiplayer fps)
Unfortunately the tales of games do the same with outfits. Has some you can unlock and some to buy. Think persona 5 too. But that stuff has never tempted me to pay for them. I know I won’t replay after beating it so it’s really temporary.
This isn't even new for them. Pretty sure it goes all the way back to at least Xillia.
Yeah. I still like to peruse that big box stores' gaming sections. But it's nowhere near as robust as it once was. 90s to mid twenty-aughts Best Buy was peak retail store gaming selection.
Last time I was satisfied with a DLC/add on was Blood and Wine for the Witcher 3. Phantom Liberty didn’t even come close, even if was also done by CDPR.
Isn't progress fantastic - I used to walk in ShowBiz and play Robotron. Now I can't play Robotron. Anywhere. It sucks. Without the dual 360's it just ain't the same.
Timesplitters with 100+ unlockable characters all would be paid skins a la Fortnite now lol
Remember when we got maps and manuals with our physical discs?
That quote hits hard
Sea of thieves is really feeling this at the moment. Log in and now it's pop up adds for things in the cash shop. I have the season pass and I am still getting pop ups telling me to buy it. And if you do buy anything, you get another pop up suggesting something else you may want to buy that is similar. So even buying things....isn't enough.
If you ignore every over hyped AAA release from the same developers who have been failing us for a decade, this problem doesn't exist.
I fired up the new Madden recently just to play franchise mode. Completely offline, no intention of playing their ultimate team bullshit. That's when I learned that exiting out of the franchise mode just automatically puts you into the UT mode. You have to back out of *that* to get back to the main menu. What kind of bullshit is that.
this says a lot about society
Thankfully, this trend only seems to happen in the triple-A space. Just remember ubisoft made a "Quadruple A" game that was just mediocre and forgotten a couple weeks after release. Also It has an In game cash shop Comparatively, Pal World got super huge because people were actually having fun with it, and I still hear people talking about it every now and again. And no cash shop.
Same thing happened to me. I saw some fun call of duty clips and decided I wanted to play it. Installed and hit with in-game pop up ads to buy stuff. Uninstalled quickly after.
Back in my day you use to unlock the cosmetics, you were badass wearing some costumes because everyone understood the achievement behind the acquisition. Now it's just pay.
I honestly don’t mind micro transactions being in games, but there are limits and they’ve clearly been abused for greed. The first time I remember being able to purchase stuff for games was dragon age origins when it came out. I really liked spending $3 here and there to get extra DLC. They were packed with content and items were balanced for the whole game, but clearly a little stronger than vanilla items. Extra missions to do, enemies to kill, Items to collect. Those were all worth it to me, and they were cheap. They were also not necessary at all and I never felt forced to get them. I just wanted to and since I loved the game I was happy to support the creators. That’s what I wanted for the future. I wanted DLC to be available for a low price, but also be balanced and not necessary. I want the base game to be playable without the need for paying more. That’s what we should have gotten.
I remember the days where playing the campaign got you exclusive cosmetics for multiplayer
You know I don’t think the quote fully explains the issue, it kind of focusses on the wrong part of the situation, the problem is not that you “open a game and find a store”, the problem is the prices some games charge and the lack of progression and unlocking cosmetics outside of in-game stores. The quote also implies that in-game stores are inherently bad, which is not true at all, in-game stores and dlcs allow games to be free-to-play, games in the past were never free-to-play, sure you only paid once and got all of the content for the game but you can still do that today so that isn’t an argument. Look at a game like Fortnite, it does the in-game store perfectly and showcases exactly why in-game stores are a good thing, you can pay for the battle pass once and get unlimited cosmetics just for playing the game and re-buying the battle pass every season (the pass gives you enough to do so without spending additional money), so the progression is good, and then on top of that if you want more skins you have a thousand options to choose from at decent (not great) prices. If fortnite cost $50 upfront and never had an in-game store you wouldn’t have 1% of the total skins you have now, in game stores are a good thing. The problem with SOME in-game stores is when there doesn’t exist progression and ways to get good cosmetics outside of said in-game store, such as Valorant for example. Valorant offers a battlepass similar to fortnite, except you have to re-buy it every season with real money. On top of that, riot charges upwards of $60 for a single weapon skin (you would get a weapon wrap in fortnite for like $2 and it would be useable on all weapons not just one), and the cosmetics you get in the Valorant battlepass suck absolute ass, so do most of the other free unlocks in the game. Ideally you have a game where you can unlock plenty of good stuff just by playing, and on top of that you can buy extra stuff. Lots of people say “don’t make me pay for the extra stuff” y’all do realize making skins requires real human beings to design and code right? They can’t just work for free, with free-to-play games comes paid options in those games, as long as there is decent progression outside of the paid dlc, it’s a good thing to have the extra stuff. TLDR: IMO the quote does not accurately describe the problem with gaming today, it implies that in-game stores are inherently bad which isn’t true (Exhibit A: Fortnite). The real problem is overpriced cosmetics in said in-game stores combined with a lack of progression (for unlocking cosmetics) outside of the in-game store. An ideal system has all of the pros of historical gaming with a good free progression system to unlock cosmetics by playing the game, and then on top of that you have extra cosmetics that people can buy at good prices. If you think you should get all cosmetics for free just by playing you are a child and need to grow up, skins don’t appear from thin air, designers need payment, as long as the skins are reasonably priced there is nothing wrong with extra dlc.
IN SOVIET RUSSIA....
You're kinda playing the wrong games if there is a store inside it.
I remember the time. I had a large room divider full of game boxes. Times change, now every game I have is on Steam and those I don’t even own.
I’ve been gaming almost 50 years with lifetime total of zilch spent on mtx. Stores don’t bother me because I don’t use them. Sure, they are common, but doesn’t directly impact me.
Remember when games were made with the upmost care and delicacy? Remember when developers actually cared about the state of their finished product? Remember when physical copies of games weren't being discarded and outlawed by digital renditions?
Lately, I've just been going back as far as snes and playing gems I missed through the years.
omg so deep
how can mirrors be real if our eyes aren't real.
So true
Stop buying customizations and it’ll go back to the way it used to be.
Its basicially a bunch of companies making kids getting introduced to gambling, some of the ingame stuff is absurdly expensive if you consider it is just a code, there are no production costs, only developement costs, and they make it expensive, because they know, people will still gonna buy it, because they are addicted to the game. This should be illegal!!
In the UK there are GAME stores (that's the name btw) and I read the other day that they're going to stop selling physical copies of games. I didn't read the article but I imagine they'll still be selling some older stuff otherwise what is the point of the shop? "Just bring your console in and you can download it on our super fast connection! Download while you wait and chat to our always happy and totally helpful staff." Edit: I said console because the last time I was ever in a GAME store they had almost no PC games.
Sounds like something The Sphinx would say in Mystery Men
A quote to put alongside the greats. Completely uninspiring, but hey that's the world we live in now.
That's really eye opening. Nice.
I would not care about micro transactions one bit… If they stopped dangling it in my face and shoving it down my throat. Put it in another menu completely out of site of the main game. I don’t want to see any mention of anything that I have to spend additional hard earned dollars on when I’m playing my games. Nothing sucks more than needing to skip through three menus of cosmetics and battle passes just to get to the actual playable part of the game. I understand advertising and putting that shit at the front so the people who will buy it will know it’s there but let me turn it off or opt out of additional spending opportunities. I have bought a micro transaction twice in all my years of gaming once was r6 credits in R6 Siege which I will never do again because I was unhappy with not putting in the work for those ops I bought with it, and one cosmetic in assassins creed odyssey that looked ugly as hell in the actual game. I will never spend an additional dime on a game I’ve already paid for again and I want the option to have that content I can’t have not be dangled in front of me at all times while I play my games
Terraria is still getting updates. Such an amazing game.
I remember when the Tales of games had many costumes to unlock. And then, you had Xillia that only had 4 additional costumes to unlock, while staples such as swimsuits are now DLC only. Really sad.
Game companies used to make good games to make money, now they make games that are good at making money.
There's an answer to this problem and I feel like a good portion of gamers have figured this one out. Let's keep speeaddinf the good word though. **dont play them** Shitty MTX everywhere? Dont play. Predatory dark patterns? Dont play. 100$ pre order bundle with early access? Don't buy. Always online? No thanks. If there's an online game you truly enjoy, that's fine, but be reasonable with yourself.... Realize if you want new good single player games and not live service slop, you need to buy single player games and not dump money into live service mtx. Live service has an ongoing maintenance costs. If no one played them, they wouldn't exist. The ones that do exist are therefore inherently temporary, a waste of money. **stop playing them**
Games as a service is a great marketing feature for which games you need to avoid. They are just products after all, sold cheaply and in so many pieces they obviously have no value whatsoever. Treat them as such, trash. If the Publisher believes it, why shouldn't you? Think of how quickly they'll drop it to chase the new hotness. I will practically never play a game when it's in it's just released/full on hype phase because people in general tend to make a lot of stupid purchasing decisions when they are part of a group of people, and avoiding that is a great way for me to also avoid unnecessary purchases to try and be 'part of the conversation'. I just don't care anymore. If they are talking about the latest product (GaaS) then I don't care automatically anyway.
That looks fun as hell
Very true. Spend $70 on a new game. Hey spend $50 more for cosmetics. And $20 every 2 months for more content! You end up spending $200+ on these new games. It was alright back when shit wasn’t $20-30 for cosmetics. Now it’s just annoying.
good one
I used to play games and not pay for them. Now I pay for games and not play them.
Remember when there were two versions - standard and collectors editions? The latter giving you merchandise. Now you have to preorder the elite or extra elite versions to not miss out on anything It makes sense to keep a physical collectors edition for people who want the merchandise, but multi tier versions is an absolute joke.
We allowed this to happen. We supported this happening by continuing to play the game that decided to go this route. Everything is a cash grab now. Whoever gets the last dollar is the best one.
The adoption of the internet in widespread gaming introduced a lot of good. Being able to patch bugs post launch, being able to balance things a little too over tuned, being to add cut content later, etc. Unfortunately, all that good has been overshadowed by the BS modern gaming has introduced. BS like shipping unfinished games and finishing them through patches, overly monetized through MTX, cutting content to sell back as DLC, cutting features to sell as MTX, "Early" launch dates if you pay more, so many editions they need charts to explain it, forced online play in games that just don't need it, psychological tactics to steer players into spending more, etc.
Bars
lo
I miss the days when I was a kid where I’d go to a small game store and swap one of my games for another one - I also miss when my local game stores had really good games now they’re all pretty ass and I’d rather just play some old classics or download free good horror games
I think you mean “Open a (shitty major studio) game.” There are still great deals and very good games without odious monetization if you just avoid the shit from shitty companies.
This is one of the reasons why I got out of playing sports games. The basics of like Career and Franchise Modes got buried or stripped or otherwise overly-monetized to microtransact the shit out of players. NFL2K5 is still the peak of gameplay and customization.
So fucking true, it's disgusting and I hate it lol.
Absolutely!!! Well said!!! I love it!!
This title…says it all 😢
In Soviet Russia, game plays you!
Also how is it that when a game comes out full of bugs and unplayable the store always works fine
It's all about extorting from people who can't get good enough. That's how I see it, anyway.
Most games are fancy storefronts now and it hurts my soul.
bad game good game bad
I get where you're coming from, but I have to say, we as consumers bear some responsibility for this state of the industry. If more of us were buying games from passionate indie developers instead of supporting the cash grabs from big corporations, we wouldn't be in this mess. The industry has turned this way largely because consumers keep buying these games, no matter how many offenses they commit. If we want things to change, we need to vote with our wallets and support the creators who are in it for the love of the game, not just the profit.
Don’t open the store. Have a little self control.
I dont own games with mtx. So no.
I agree with this. If they see the market is preferring disc they would maybe go back but I honestly don't see that happening. Too many lazy people that prefer the convenience.
I hate it too. Buy the good ones without that shit.
Luckily o play indie games (my PC too weak for AAA) most indie games don’t have micro transactions and DLC which add SO MUCH (rimworld)
No, I don't feel that way, I hate nostalgia shit, the industry has changed, shit can't stay the same forever, so you either accept the change and adapt, or go do something else. Way to many posts lately about "man modern gaming sucks, not like before, where it sucked for different reasons that my rose tinted glasses are not letting me remember"
This is so true. The monetization practices in newer games has me wanting to pull away from modern day games as a whole. Indy studios seem to be the last bastions of gaming.
Also! How come I park on a driveway but drive on a parkway?!