You should try Old School Runescape if you want an MMORPG without any microtransactions or FOMO/daily grind mechanics.
The cool part with OSRS is that every new feature or update has to pass the player polls, meaning they are unable to add stuff no one asked for. This includes microtransactions, partnerships, battlepasses, etc.
I actually have played around 900 hours of it on Steam alone. I’m not going to support them anymore though because of their bullshit price increases. They are owned by an investment company now That is milking them for every cent. World of Warcraft has never once increased the prices of their game at all. I’m not going to support a game that is like that
I mean… They have grown. The studio is bigger, they don’t have other revenue sources like Blizzard does really (also Activision Blizzard is owned by Microsoft, if you’re worried about a games company being owned by someone else that just wants profit…), and shit costs more now than it did 10 or 20 years ago. I wish it didn’t but inflation is a thing, and that thing affects the food and housing bills of the employees at companies.
For what it’s worth, OSRS has made some absolutely amazing improvements in the last couple years. Almost every single update has hit perfectly with nothing but minor errors or complaints. New expansions and regions, new quests, new raid, weapon and damage rebalances, new bosses, new community events and special game modes, new updates to their clients both mobile and desktop, and most importantly a significantly better bot-busting system over the last few months.
This shit isn’t cheap. That’s a LOT of parallel systems and work, and OSRS continues to have 0 micro transactions outside of membership. True, RS3 and its cesspool of mtx helps fund OSRS, but I don’t know how far that goes since the player count there is stagnant.
Now your opinion and choice to not support a company is always valid, that is up to you. But I don’t think it really is a “bullshit” price increase. I’m OK with OSRS costing $2 more per month if it means that this current cadence of content of QOL updates marches on. Jagex has been absolutely nailing it and I’m very happy with them, and that’s worth money to me.
Thing that cured me of my destiny 2 fomo was to get the transmog system to make my character look like a year 1 day 1 player (the broken armor you get when Ghaul takes your light) and then that’s my “look” I’m the guy who looks like they’ve never change their armor. Then I picked one ship and one emblem I liked (Xûr’s rock ship, and Strange Coin emblem) and that’s it. no more MTX.
I was talking about persistence, as in not giving up. Persistence is a must for souls games so you’re going to have to like the process of failing a lot and then finally getting the relief that comes at the very end.
Of course you’re correct: persistence is key and much more important than consistency (as in: perfectly nail every dodge, which is my problem).
Like many others already said: Probably the best take is to “understand” that dying is not failure but part of the progression system. But instead of grinding experience points to progress your character (which is totally possible in dark souls) you grind real experience by repeating difficult parts over and over again and progress as a player.
So that’s great, but halo IMO is the least FOMO inducing mp game on the market with battle passes. You can actually “equip” the season pass you want to level and work on it, the best thing is they never go away so there’s literally not a single bit of FOMO, only the illusion. Regardless, I see your point for the other games and I commend you for making the change.
I’m glad I’ve had a few epiphanies over my gaming time that have resulted in no desire to spend any money on P2W or content skipping.
First one was in the first Turok game on N64. I was playing normally but at some point looked up the cheat codes for things like unlock all weapons, unlimited ammo, and unlocking all levels. There was one weapon that you needed to collect hidden pieces of from each level, and then you only got 3 shots with it that would pretty much AoE clear an area. There was another gun that you’d only find 2 shots of ammo for at a time that was similar. I had fun for a bit running around and shooting those guns at will, but after that it was hard to get motivated to play the game without the cheats because I knew the big weapons were basically just temporary consumables, which meant I’d probably never use them while trying to ration them for moments they’d be most useful. Using those cheat codes ruined the game for me.
The second epiphany was after raiding for a while in WoW and thinking about the loot motivation. It was a circular motivation: you get better loot so that you can raid more to get even better loot. If the loot was the main motivation, then it was pointless because the loot didn’t serve any purpose outside of the game. So it only made sense to do raiding because I enjoyed the process, not because of the rewards. And this applied to most reward mechanisms in games. Taking that logic just a bit further made me realize that P2W is actually paying money to avoid playing a game and short circuit right to getting the rewards, which was kinda pointless when the rewards were meant to improve the experience of playing the game. Either a) you don’t want to play the game at all, or b) you don’t get as much satisfaction from using the better loot or whatever because you skipped the part where you had to do it without those rewards.
And then the last one is finding PvP less satisfying when the game mechanics give significant advantages based on either time spent grinding or paying money to avoid grinding. Did I just win because of my skills or because I’ve acquired better gear? Did I just lose because the other player outplayed me or because they got better gear? And I didn’t even want to give any satisfaction to those who just paid money to win and don’t worry about what it does or doesn’t say about their skills. It’s similar to the line of thought when you know cheating is possible… Did I get beat by someone skilled enough to aim better or someone using an aim bot?
Comparing P2W to cheating is spot on, especially as these are much more heavily advertised and used in PvP games. What really annoys me is when these players, or similars that never go after equivalent players, feel all superior despite showing zero skill
On WoW, I remember playing a few times on instant 255 private servers, back in 2007-2010. It felt so damn pointless to me, especially as the raids still needed you to make a raid group. I enjoyed a portion of the grind, even as a mostly solo player.
It’s refreshing seeing your list since people often blame gachas nowadays, but MMOs were the issue originally, it’s just that other genres took a lesson from MMOs so now we have way more grinding options and it gets tiresome.
I really appreciate that because someone was over here trying to convince me to play a gacha game claiming that it’s not that bad. Some people just don’t get it
Gacha games are like magicians. You know they are total bullshit and there is no “magic”, yet some people still look at it and think there is something else going on.
Total waste of money, I don’t understand how people get sucked into those things.
I left mmos due to my wife spending to much on "free" games for awhile. I miss them in some ways but also am sorta glad. They were easy to over indulge in and I have a lot of responsibilities. single player, buy once and done, games along with streaming shows or movies is so much easier to take or leave. No limited events or dailies or anything.
Yeah I agree with you here. A lot of Trackmania players are annoyed by Trackmania’s $20 a year subscription and have called to make it F2P with cosmetic microtransactions, but I’m pretty happy that hasn’t happened. There isn’t even any DLC. It is really nice to see not have to see ads to pay more money for stuff.
Except for like 3 helm pieces which they released like 15 years ago and have since made available through others means, there’s literally nothing beyond a few mounts and pets. So your whole “mounts, cosmetics, miscellaneous” thing is very misleading. Other than that, I agree with you and I’m glad you’ve managed to get away. Kudos.
Edit: seems I missed a few of sets that they released in the last 4 years. 5 of them to be precise. And a pair of wings and a helm piece. Some of which were given for free to subscribers before being put on the store.
I checked the site before posting just to make sure because I didn’t wanna post BS, but it seems I missed a couple of things. I apologize, they also released 6 cosmetic sets in the last 4 years, an extra helm and a pair of wings. Some of which they simply gave for free to subscribers before putting on the store.
That’s still less than you’re making it sound. Definitely not one every month. Again, not defending them or disagreeing with you, I just don’t like it when people make things sound worse than they are to get people to agree with them.
Also, that transmig restriction bit is also a lie. There’s quite a few cosmetics that are armor class agnostic. I know because I have them and I’ve never spent a dime in the store. Here is a list of most of them.
I’d you don’t have a job, and can play 12 hours a day to farm that gear. Great! Enjoy school life. But adults don’t have time to farm all that shit, purchasing is effectively the only way to get it. It is disingenuous to conflate "being obtainable ’ with “no need to ever purchase”.
There’s a list of 2000 pieces. And only 5 sets that you can buy. Also every month you get free trader’s tender for simply logging in. You use that to buy those pieces. If you do a few world quests you get even more. I literally cap out on the monthly 1k tender by playing a few hours. Why are you people being so negative for no reason.
There’s plenty of things to hate. There’s plenty of things even blizzard are guilty of. Look at overwatch for thousdands of reasons. But wow is one of the games that’s most respectful of your time. Nowadays and as far as MMOs go, that is. I literally have a 4 piece set without ever stepping foot in a normal raid. Only did LFR once, got 1 piece. The other 3 were given for free. You get so much shit in this game by simply logging in and playing a couple of hours it’s insane.
If you want the entire transmog collection the game has to offer, that’s been released over the course od 20 years, yes, you have to grind. But let’s not pretend you need to play a lot to have some nice sets. That hasn’t been true in a long time.
Play the game for a few hours or pay. Yeah, complicated. You sound like you have too much disposable income if you’re so willing to pay for stuff… also, some of us enjoy playing games and don’t mind doing it.
Nah, if you actually played free to play games then you’d know that wow’s mtx store is a baby compared to most games such as overwatch, lol, dota, cs, valorant, PoE, Warframe, etc. and you wouldn’t be arguing with me over calling out a person for exaggerating over 6 released armor sets in the span of 4 years.
bin.pol.social
Gorące