the consensus I’ve gotten is that the MTXs are largely meaningless because they’re so easy to get in-game
I would push back on this a bit. Some of these items are easy to acquire small quantities of, but are not available in infinite amounts, such as (as far as I know) the fast travel tokens. I am 20-ish hours in, and I think I have 8 fast travel tokens, which means that I really just don’t use them, and hoard them for emergencies.
Convenience is addictive, and people absolutely will have trouble not pouring tens or hundreds of dollars into MTX once they get a taste of the convenience it offers. Ask ESO users how many don’t have ESO Plus; it’s incredibly common to have, because it gives you free fast travel and a dedicated, infinite inventory for crafting materials. It’s weaponized convenience.
Other items in DD2 I’ve used CheatEngine to dupe, but I think most people (and obviously, no one on console) aren’t going to be able to figure out hex editors, and shouldn’t have to.
So there’s fast travel tokens but you can get to most places by Oxcart for very cheap. The ferrystones also get more common as you go and I’ve never had a lack of them. I just finished the game yesterday and have not felt the game design being influenced by micro transactions.
I’m less upset by what the MTX is or that it’s there in a seventy dollar single player game, than I am that they did not disclose it would even have MTX until the day it launched.
If it has been known before hand, I wouldn’t have really cared too much. RE4 has the same kind of MTX, it does not affect the game, but it was also known before launch that it would have it.
Tbf this kind of bullshit useless mtx has been in probably every capcom game for a while now so it was expected on my end. I hate that capcom forces the devs to include them but every game I’ve played that had them they were useless and the devs were only doing malicious compliance.
I am against MTX because they have put parents in debt when their children have racked up huge MTX bills and it’s very difficult/impossible to get refunds. Yes, parents can protect themselves against this but many parents are not particularly tech savvy and games companies will see these as potentially huge revenue streams and abuse the hell out of them… like EPIC did.
Also, gaming addicts should also be considered and potential routes to indebtedness avoided.
Knowing a game has MTX just makes me less likely to buy it. Price the game correctly in the first place, and offer DLCs if you want some extra revenue.
The whole thing is a storm in a teacup. I’m level 40 in the game and have not once felt the need to even LOOK at the MTX store. The game is complete; the MTX are there if you’re too lazy to be bothered using the in-game travel mechanics. Simple as that.
This is another layer of “horse armor MTX”, now with selling pay-to-win features in AAA single-player games. In this case, the first (early?) time it’s been done, it’s “mild”, but it’s a step in the wrong direction.
I don’t like “slippery slope” arguments, in general, but it doesn’t cost me anything to boycott this game for having P2W MTX in a full-priced single-player game. If enough people agree, that might send the message to the industry that nickel and diming their customers isn’t a good business model.
Edit: Also, not including the MTX in review copies is egregiously sleazy since they were hiding it. Customers couldn’t make an informed decision (and their review scores are inflated).
In this case, the first (early?) time it’s been done, it’s “mild”, but it’s a step in the wrong direction.
It’s certainly not the first time, capcom did this. I remember them in DMC 4 and 5 and they were in DD1 as well but so inconsequential that everyone has forgotten. I think capcom just requires their devs to add them but the devs only do malicious compliance. I dislike capcom for it as it preys on uninformed people but like the devs for not making them actually required or designing the game around them.
I was also confused at first by the controversy, because I’d been playing for like 20+ hours and I was like “What microtransactions?” Then I checked the main menu and sure enough there’s an “online store” option, which I guess I had just thought was for upgrading to the deluxe edition or buying expansions or whatever. I guess they’re selling rift crystals or ferry stones or something? IDK I still haven’t bothered opening it.
DD1 didn’t have any MTX right? I think I expected it to since “rift crystals” absolutely sound like some kind of premium currency bullshit, but I don’t remember any actual way to buy them. That’s about the only thing I think makes the outrage make sense, it sucks for corporations to start adding shit like that to a series that didn’t have it before and I’d be worried about DD3 in the future being even more upfront with them.
If the mtx is meaningless because you can get it easily in game, then it is predatory as it is intended to be purchased by people who are not aware that they can earn it in game. That strikes me as worse than mtx that is required to do something they can’t without it, because it preys on people’s lack of information and they aren’t making an informed choice.
You encounter the merchant where you can buy the MTX stuff in the first few hours of the game. You can’t even use the majority of them before reaching that point.
I would honestly bet money that they’d designed the game to not have microtransactions, then some executive at the 11th hour told them to find a way to include them, and they made them inconsequential as a sort of malicious compliance. Not that I think it’s OK to have them in the first place, it really soured me on the game initially. I think it’s considerably worse for including them, but they are completely meaningless.
Hate it hate it. This game is so good, and it’s like I’m playing my old favorite again. The fact that they marred my baby with MTX like this is just gross. DD1 should be more popular, and what they did to DD2 may keep it from being the powerhouse it could because people will see the “mixed” ratings and second guess. Or they’ll open the store page and see a wall of MTX and get the wrong idea.
But that’s just part of it of course. If this works for them, it’ll explode. And it will work for them. And everyone will get these fucking MTX in their full priced AAA games. And then once sales on MTX aren’t up to snuff – or if they are up to snuff, but in a few quarters when sales are merely consistent rather than continuing to grow – they’ll start pushing it. Just like they did with Shadow of Mordor where the gameplay gave you a nasty grind and a quick “buy your way past it” option.
I’ll never buy the “it doesn’t effect you in a single player game” argument. It will, because the market incentives a worse experience for those less willing to buy in.
Here’s someone corroborating you, but it’s impossible to Google at the moment for obvious reasons. I have 0 recollection of any MTX, though. FWIW, it wouldn’t be any less bad if they did it before too.
To be clear though, it didn’t ruin it. I said it “marred” the game. It is a mark that affects how the game is perceived and I hate that. The game itself is fun, and I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.
Dark Arisen just gave you most of the MTX content for free. When you start the game and pull an Eternal Ferrystone out of your bank along with all the starter armor that sells for 500k gold - yeah, that was all MTX gear.
As with DD1, DD2 is fun and I don’t mean to say it isn’t. The MTX just provides a barrier to entry for folks turned off by it, and I wish it wasn’t there.
As far as I've heard, previous Capcom games already feature these types of mostly meaningless DLC. So it's not a first test, and so far the older games haven't been adjusted to make the microtransactions more appealing.
I agree, Capcom aren't dumb, it's probably just a minimal amount of work, and if they can get even a few buyers they make money. Although, who knows if the hit to their reputations negates all of this.
Yes, all of their games in the past few years or so have DLCs like that. What I’m actually worried about is some of their games the MTX aren’t irrelevant like these. Monster Hunter has been getting more and more of these with each new release since World and I’m scared of what they’ll do with Wilds.
It’s the same type of microtransactions that they had in Resident Evil 4 Remake, so it’s probably not so much a test as a limit they found where backlash is small enough that it still makes sense. But there are 2 big differences with Dragon’s Dogma 2.
They fucked up the PC port.
They increased the base game price.
Anyone that tries to justify microtransactions in a paid game is a moron. They were literally introduced in free to play games to finance the game development. In paid game, it’s just pure greed.
I mean also it just seems like a case of normalization. You start out with slow meaningless MTX then you move it more and more. Hell its a bit odd since I'm glad there was some outrage over the MTX in this game but as you said its most likely due to the increase to $70 usd which is a slap in the face to deal with MTX in a fucking single player game but Capcom is one of the shittiest companies when it comes to dumb/pointless MTX.
Monster Hunter, Devil may cry, Dead Rising, and Resident Evil all have this kind of shit with very little peeps about it. So you basically hit the nail on the head on this on why there was such a big outrage this time around. Also I'm really surprised fucking Street Fighter doesn't, the literal poster child of pointless/odd additions which in a funny way has actually only gotten better in the digital age. I'm not a big fighting game fan but season passes have sort of solved having so many fucking editions of a single game. Like holy shit there were 5 fucking versions of Street Fighter 2 in a span of 3 years. 3 versions of SF3 in 3 years.
Edit: marked by bold, I was tired when writing this comment and seems I just forgot to finish my full thought before posting.
Wow. This is something I have never heard of before but it conceptually makes sense albeit I am a have no idea how long a tank would run a train for. Would love to learn more too, so please link is to whatever it is your are creating. Hoping a video on the topic.
Thanks! So far that site seems to be the best source of information I’ve been able to find (the Wikipedia article seems to mostly be a restated, trimmed down version of it) but there are a few other articles online I’m trying to vet for accuracy.
I’m especially interested in this quote:
“A fireless soda engine, together with evaporating apparatus, has been at work on the Aix la Chapelle-Burtscheid tramway for the last half year. In order to test the working capacity of this locomotive engine, and the consumption of fuel on a certain day, the Honigmann locomotive engine was put to work this day from 8:45 o’clock am till 8 o’clock pm, with a pause of three-quarters of an hour for the second quantity of soda lye. The engine was, therefore, at work for fully 10� hours, viz, 5� hours with the first quantity, and five with the second. The distance between Heinrichsalle and Wilhelmstrasse, where the engine performed the regular service, is 1 km, […] This distance was traversed sixty-four times, the total distance, including the journeys to the station, being 66 km.”
So it sounds like it ran for about five hours and traveled 33km on its load of caustic soda (I’m not sure at a glance which flavor chemical) and only took 45 minutes to refuel and come back up to temp.
And these were early designs, basically prototypes (though granted, the folks in that time making them probably knew a ton about steam locomotives). I imagine they could have been improved with time to study and refine the designs.
I’m not sure how well the boilers stood up to containing hot caustic stuff, but perhaps materials science has developed enough to help protect against that.
I’m writing and making visual art in the solarpunk genre, which tends to heavily emphasize trains and other public transit. But I want to broaden our options a bit beyond just electric trains. When I first heard about these, I felt like they’d mix super well with another invention of that time period, the mirrored solar concentrators used to run steam generators (some of the earliest solar power).
After all, one of the biggest disadvantages of the caustic soda locomotives was that it took more coal to dry the soda than to produce an equivalent amount steam directly with coal. But you don’t have to use coal. These 1800s mirrored dishes only require mirrors or polished metal and math to make (plus some simple motors and electronics to get them to follow the sun) and they could dry the soda for free. A lot of my focus is on less utopian, rebuilding societies, so trains and solar concentrators built with 1800s technology seems like a good place to start.
I’m going to start with a picture of a stop along the tracks for replenishing the soda in this style
plus a description. And I’m hoping to work them into a fiction story and a tabletop campaign.
As for the technical side, I’m not sure on whether they’ll be draining the diluted caustic soda and pouring in fresh, whether they’ll be drying it inside the locomotive’s boiler using superheated steam generated with a solar boiler besides the tracks, perhaps swapping locomotives to avoid delays, or even swapping boilers as someone on reddit suggested. If I go with swapping the soda, probably the boiler tank won’t actually be inside the dish, but nearby, with the steam from the dish heating it.
I hope that helps, I’m very new to this technology and am already trying to mix it with other stuff so we’ll see how it goes.
Considering that most of the descriptions I’ve seen of drying the caustic soda mention pumping superheated steam through it, and that almost any of these systems, or something like these modern ones could produce that, there’s probably lots of ways to match these trains to analog solar power.
Oh wow. What a great reply and a super cool project you are working on. You have inspired me too as one of the attractions in my VR Theme Park I am Imagineering is about trains and I would love to add a foot note about these. Thanks so much.
I have that and also MC:LA for the PS3. I recently learned that Rockstar never officially ported MC:LA to the PC so the only official ways to play it are on the PS3 and 360. And sadly RPCS3 still needs more optimization before it’s playable. I get about 15-30 fps whenever I try it.
I am currently playing through midnight club Los Angeles on RPCS3 on Ubuntu 22.04.
I would say it is about 70 to 90% stable. There are certain areas of the map that load it lower frame rates. Certain updates of RPCS3 have seem to affect this. Perhaps I should be more actively communicating in their community.
I am right now running a particular build of RPCS3 for midnight club LA.
0.0.31-16277 (from 4-1-24)
I’d say it’s about 85-90% stable. Totally playable ehat promoted this whole thread.
I’ll take your word for it, but no arcade racing game will ever be as fun as the old Burnout games (mainly 3 and Revenge). Certainly not 100% hits though…
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