I say this as someone who doesn't like MTX, but I've never understood how optional cosmetics ever factor into whether a game is "complete". The only way they could be seen as an important part of the game is if you play games to play dressup. Which I get if you're playing a fashion designer style game or a game thats almost purely social, but in the majority of games they don't fucking matter at all. How do people get so bent out of shape about them?
this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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The only way they could be seen as an important part of the game is if you play games to play dressup.
You really shouldn't be but I feel you'd be surprised how many people, especially MMORPG players, care about this. I personally play GW2 a lot and since there's no gear treadmill unlocking cosmetics is one of the main goals you can actually do there, to show off your accomplishments or hard work. Ofc it's not the only thing keeping players engaged but it is a major part of it.
Besides, if it didn't matter to players then it wouldn't be monetized as much in the first place. So whenever I see this argument "well its just cosmetics so it doesnt matter:", I get kinda frustrated because obviously it matters, obviously it works which is why it's still a thing to monetize so much.
I'm not arguing it doesn't matter, I'm arguing it shouldn't matter.
It's a sad state that we can't just pay for a completed game and avoid any microtransaction bs in game while playing.
Well, you can still do that. Just play other games; there are more than enough around to fill a lifetime.
Personally, my experience is that games where everybody is obsessed with cosmetics aren't that fun to begin with.
Have you ever found that game where it plays well, mechanics are solid and the art is also up your alley. But at the end of each round you play you just see the little battle pass section trying to prey on your sense of FOMO, trying to scrape out just a little more, even though the price tag upfront is already a bit higher than what you'd normally pay for a game in the same vein.
I found a game I probably could've genuinely enjoyed for a long time. I was talking it up to my friends to buy it on release together so we could play co-op. The demo was really great.
For it to come with a Day 1 battle pass (plus online only access when it had singleplayer modes) makes the developer's intent very clear: we want more money, and we'll use every FOMO trick in the book to achieve it. And once you pay, you still have to work for those rewards you paid for.
Cosmetic DLCs are fine. I play a fair bit of DST and I enjoy collecting twitch drops and free skins, and if I wanted to support the Devs more I could buy a pack. That's upfront and transparent. I don't get reminded every time I build a chest that "There's 16 more skins you can unlock for this item". That would be scummy.
The answer is still to not play that game. I'm also not sure what DST is; Don't Starve Together?
The business these days is that keeping people online provides value to other players who are considering being online. A big online population means new players have reasons to jump in and play. How do they make sure there's a large population? They create psychological hooks to make sure you keep coming back, rather than making a multiplayer game that's satisfying, that you could play with friends whenever you wanted with small group sizes and your own servers. Because the business is to monetize that pool of players over and over again rather than to keep making new experiences via new games every couple of years.
It is a bad deal. I got into a game called Fantasy Strike. It's a fighting game that boils the genre down to basics and gets you right into the fun. I loved it. It didn't sell a ton of copies. So they updated it to be free-to-play; everything gameplay-related in the game was free (with an asterisk...more on that later) and they monetized it with a bunch of the live service trappings and nonsense that bothered you enough to make this post. Limited time purchases for cosmetics, subscriptions, etc. The thing that made me stop playing it was that they added a replay viewer where, much like in Street Fighter 5 and 6, you can just watch anyone else's replays, including your own, but that replay viewer was locked behind a subscription fee. You know, the feature that people use to get better at the game and see what they did wrong. Monthly subscription. It's a horrendous deal and made me put the game down. You don't get to charge me a recurring fee for something that lives on my own hard drive and gets calculated by my own computer. Likewise, these live service games are all things that could be run without their servers, with private servers or LAN, but they want you to keep seeing these opportunities to buy these ephemeral cosmetics where both they and the game itself are designed to self-destruct once the game stops making money.