It’s OK for people to spend as much money as they want supporting [gambling]. If you enjoy the work that a developer does for a [gambling service], it makes sense to fund their business.
Would you feel the same about your paragraph with these changes? Destiny 2 used to have full blown loot boxes after all.
I think it is important to still ralley against predatory mtx mechanics even if they don’t work for you. Other people don’t necessarily have full control over their own spending habits and by allowing these systems we openly allow developers to exploit these people. Luckily we started having laws against gambling mechanics (although Gacha is still a thing), but there are still many other psychological tricks at play for almost all of these shops.
According to interviews it’s supposed to be bigger than Limgrave and have it’s own upgrade system in addition to the normal rune level. Something similar to Sekiro. At least 10 new bosses. Multiple new weapon categories. If that’s all true, it’s basically a standalone game built into Elden Ring. I’ve bought smaller games for about the same or even more.
I honestly can’t answer you, I don’t know anything about the game besides seeing it everywhere for years. Stuff like: How in your face is advertising? Do season even add anything besides these packs? Are they missable? The only thing I can say for sure: I dislike how they present multiple bundles with varying amounts of DLC on their steam page. Without prior knowledge I’d have to go through everything and check if I’d be missing out on some actual DLC content and I’d assume there are people buying an actually reasonably priced game for over a 100 bucks because they want all DLC assuming it’s real content. Sure, that’s on them not checking, but also kinda on the developer naming it stuff like “Deluxe” or “Master” Edition instead of “All Cosmetics Edition” or something among those lines.
Regardless, even if it is an genuine exception, they add massive content updates and don’t push these packs at all. Do they even make a profit then? Massively successful games like DRG, Terraria or Stardew Valley can do whatever they want - they have funded themselves more or less for life already and probably would still sell anyways. Normal service games need to turn a profit with their updates which still means either having a subscription or predatory mtx.
I don’t think every topic deserves nuance. Every mtx shop is predatory, every successful service game lives off whales. You’d just draw an arbitrary line at how aggressivly they hunt whales, but they need them all the same. Even if you can get everything with ingame currency drops, if people wouldn’t spend enough, the game wouldn’t get new content.
The only fair solution is to scrap mtx entirely and make all service games subscription based. But people aren’t ready for that, this conversation often comes down to “as long as they don’t exploit me, I’ll take my free games”.
You know, drip feeding stuff is no fun. Paying for trivial things is no fun either. We used to get full-blown expansions for the price some companies want for a single skin.
Instead of adding stuff to a shop, games could get actual new content. Instead of buying every asset separately, they could all be thrown in with said new content. Like, yeah, they should get paid for their continued work, but that does not mean the consumer should be milked for every penny.
Having the option to use real money is the problem. Nothing is stopping them from adding more and more expensive stuff until you cannot grind it anymore. That’s how we went free cosmetics to 60+ bucks for skins.
It started with “It’s just a silly horse armor DLC, just don’t buy it!”, continued with “It’s just cosmetics bro, just don’t get them!”, then we got “The shop is fine though, you can get the currency ingame!” and got to “The timed battle pass is fine, you also get free stuff!”. You can draw your own line for mtx, but slowly we’re both approaching and crossing it if you accept anything before that.
The way I see things, “the least pressured to buy stuff” reads like “the least aggressive cancer”. Sure, it could be worse, but like, you’ve still got cancer. There’s still the ideal option of being healthy instead.
It can be the least predatory mtx system ever, being in a paid game is still not acceptable and I’ll die on that hill. Never bought anything with a shop or battle pass and won’t start now.
I feel you, I’ve been burning out right after Lyndell, went from no Spirit Ashes straight to the mimic one and rushed the remainder. Missed most of it, I presume. On the plus side, I’ve been edging to play the last stretch ‘for real’ and am wating for the DLC to do so.
I’m 25 hours in and barely touched the main story. Once they let me roam around I did nothing but side content. Just yesterday I got access to the “Pokemon” League and I see myself not touching any story content for another 5 hours. It’s great.
Watch people try to still predict a Switch 2 reveal within a partner showcase. And while that’s not gonna happen, most games I’m interested in will sadly never hit the current Switch - namely the new Monster Hunter or Metaphor, the new game from the Persona people. But you’ll never know, there could some other awesome stuff in there.
They probably need some more time to make the new swamp extra swamp-y.
But in all seriousness, Miyazaki hasn’t disappointed me yet. He can take all the time he wants to, I’ll be there to get it once it drops. Be that tomorrow or in several years.
It’s multi-platform, uses one of the biggest IPs of an entire generation and seems to do it quite well too. Everything else would have been more surprising to me.
I feel like it’s just wrong to call these games ‘free’. They are ‘partially free’ with the incentive to extract as much money from you as possible in order to get the ‘good stuff’ or simply to avoid endless hours of unfun grinding. It’s just inferior in every way compared to games you pay for once and that’s it, because they don’t need to drip feed you ‘fun’.
Exceptions apply to competitive games that need a changing meta and content updates. New content for non-competitve ‘free’ games mostly amounts to new stuff you can buy to surpass new arbitrary walls built in front of you.