That’s why steam reviews are better with it being from actual people who aren’t scared of being blacklisted from future access. Even with joke reviews it’s still actually more informative. These review outlets call it review bombing, but I call it review awareness with it highlighting and bringing attention to things paid reviewers neglect and ignore.
I don’t blame the reviewers for reviewing the product they were given. I blame Capcom for the bait and switch, and the editors who won’t edit the review to reflect the current reality
I don’t even necessarily blame the devs, but I do blame the shareholders and people in administrative positions who pushed for this
Spoilers: they won’t.
Oh good, one more AAA I can auto-skip over.
Did you know you can block publishers on Steam?
Why skip when you can pirate it for free? Everything is pirateable these days.
I sure can’t. They just show back up with “Blocked” on the cover
That’s not blocking them. That’s just modifying the cover art
Completely agree. Block means don’t see in my mind.
ITT: Mental Gymnastics competition to see how well one can defend corporate greed
Nobody wants to admit they’ve been taken for a ride.
Mark Twain said it best: “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”
Useful idiot is the norm for this generation.
I dislike the microtransactions as well, but there’s an insane amount of disinformation about them in these discussions.
Almost all of the items are easily obtainable in the game by just playing, so there’s no gating of content behind the paywall. It being a single player game, there’s also no competitive advantage to be gained by buying them for real money (or inversely lost out on by not buying them)
The whole discussion is blown widely out if proportion.
I view the mtx as basically paying for cheat codes. I’m not interested in using cheats but am opposed to companies trying to monetize them. It’s straight up mobile game level of BS in a PC game. Tbh though, if the store button wasn’t available in the main men, I wouldn’t even know the mtx exist.
From the comments here I can see we learned nothing from Horse Armour.
I’m gonna paste a comment I left the other day pertaining to this:
I will die on the hill of “Oblivion’s horse armor DLC was not the beginning of micro transactions”
Because it wasn’t. There were micro transactions for games long before the hore armor thing. Also, horse armor was a one-time purchase for that mechanic.
I’m pretty sure the mtx for dragons dogma are all 1 time dlc bought on the steam page just like the horse Armour.
I will die on the hill of “Oblivion’s horse armor DLC was not the beginning of micro transactions”
Because it wasn’t. There were micro transactions for games long before the hore armor thing.
Such as? Are you saying you could pay a small amount for something in a game before this? Sure, it’s possible.
Also, horse armor was a one-time purchase for that mechanic.
Ok, and? As in it’s a small amount (micro) purchase for a thing?
I’m not sure exactly what hill you’re dying on here. That there was a game somewhere that had buyable things for small amounts of money before Oblivion? Sure, there may have been. And?
Double dragon 3. You had to put coins into the arcade machine to literally buy items from an in-game store…
Also, second life came out before Oblivion.
Double dragon 3. You had to put coins into the arcade machine to literally buy items from an in-game store…
Do you have any links for that? I love to read up on it, had never heard about it before today.
I thought it was going to be hard to find, since this was an arcade game from my childhood… But here’s one article from Neogaf.
If you Google “Double dragon 3 arcade insert coins”, there are reddit articles, forums talking about this, and even the Wikipedia article talks about this being one of the first commercial games to have in-game micro transactions.
"The U.S. version also features item shops where players could use additional credits to purchase in-game items such as weapons, a
dditional moves and new playable characters in one of the earliest forms of microtransactions in a video game, although this system would end up being removed in the later-released Japanese version…"
Also, not defending Bethesda’s practice, but Horse armor also wasn’t their first microtransaction for oblivion…
They also had themes and stuff on the Xbox store, and literally told people that these types of things were going to be released.
To be fair - I didn’t buy oblivion, a friend of mine had it for Xbox, and I went and sailed the kazaa seas and downloaded the base game + all the DLCs without having to pay micro$oft’s ransom. Only pointing out that we knew well before horse armor that gamers will open their wallets for this.
Honestly, I was just looking for a link so I can read up on it, not challenging you about it.
I actually tried Googling your comment sentence but it just gave me the game and nothing about this feature you were talking about.
I’m going to go take a look at that article you linked for me. Appreciate it.
Follow up to my last comment. That link is just user comments discussion about the arcade game, and not an actual publication article that describes the in-game store.
We have to just assume that person posting that comment is knowledgeable and factual, and not astroturfing, etc.
And that the Wikipedia article discussing it is in fact wrong as well…
Sorry, there isn’t a lot of contemporaneous discussion referencing microtransactions on an arcade game that came out in the mid-90s… Back then, we paid up and complained about it to your friends or the person who had their coin on the table.
Basically, the gist is during game play, at specific breaks, you could have the opportunity to buy things like characters, combat abilities, infinit resources, etc.
Here you can even watch someone play the game. Miracle of the internet age, you can just open up a browser, type in “double dragon 3 arcade gameplay” and watch someone play the game and live the experience of being 10 years old in the 90s vicariously through someone else.
Or you could even download the PC port, or play it in emulation on your device of choice so you can truly see if those nasty first-hand accounts are telling the truth and you don’t have to question whether those people posting were knowledgeable, astroturfing, etc.
https://sh.itjust.works/comment/10147126
https://lemmy.world/comment/8707129
Here’s a couple replies to my earlier comment that bring up games from before and early in the mainstream console days (pre-Xbox/PlayStation).
I’m sure there are plenty of other examples as well.
Ok, I still don’t understand the ‘hill you’re dying on here.’ I don’t think anyone truly believed that Oblivion was the First Video Game Ever ™ with Microtransactions in it, I’m not sure that was the point, I’m fairly certain the point was how ludicrous it was to force people to pay for Horse Armour in their First Person game. It set off a series of discussions about whether or not this should be the way forward, people acquiesced, and it became standard.
Thus: “From the comments here I can see we learned nothing from Horse Armour.”
Because people are still defending predatory practices in the industry with ‘yeah but you can just grind to get…’ or ‘but you don’t have to…’
Also, horse armor was a one-time purchase for that mechanic.
It wasn’t even a mechanic, though.
The armor literally did nothing, it was a cosmetic.No it was armour. Technically it just buffed your horse’s HP rather than being true armour, but it did something.
There was also a new vendor who sold it and a little quest to enable it.
Ah, you’re right I guess I was misremembering
And it was all of $2.50 if I remember correctly.
Agreed, it’s really not what people think of when they really think of microtransactions. Horse armour was really just mediocre & overpriced DLC.
Lots was learned. They learned they can continue to move the goalposts simply forever it seems.
Wait for the rage over this particular round to die down. Release a game with similar but slightly dialed back bullshit. Tell everyone how much better you are than them.
Repeat until people pay $99 for the right to rent the game for $10 a month plus pay to win MTX.
Sure DD2 is a corpse, but a new game will come growing from its corpse.
Soon the poors won’t be able to play games anyway as that will be forbidden by their owners
“Jeez Capcom, leave some evil for the rest of us!” - Satan probably
At this point I think it’s safe to say that if Satan was real, he’s the biggest shareholder of every tech company in the world, including those that make video games.
Nah, he’s just consulting.
“[…]these micotransactions grant more frequent access to features many gamers deem essential for any action RPG. This includes fast travel and character customisation.”
Wait, what? Seriously devs?
the key phrase there being ‘more frequent’. the fast travel and character customization are all in the game and have a more in-universe integration. the game systems are supposed to be more immersive than just click the map and fast travel. you typically either take a cart from town to town or warp using a stone that gets used up.
I like it the way it is, makes leaving town to quest and adventure have another layer of strategy. If someone wants to bypass that strategy layer with money then so be it. I certainly would prefer that it be a mod rather than a MTX, and will definitely not be buying any regardless.
Nah, this is inherently scummy behavior.
Want to enforce a particular tone and strategic layer to a game by limiting fast travel based on a consumable? Cool. Just don’t make that a consumable that can be purchased with real dollars.
I like it the way it is, makes leaving town to quest and adventure have another layer of strategy. If someone wants to bypass that strategy layer with money then so be it. I certainly would prefer that it be a mod rather than a MTX, and will definitely not be buying any regardless.
This has been solved for a long time. If you want to force people to leave the town to quests and adventure just stick to Morrowind style fast travel where fast travel doesn’t go everywhere. If you want people to be able to fast travel everywhere then let them fast travel everywhere. If people can fast travel everywhere but don’t want to fast travel everywhere then it’s a single player game, they’re free to make up their own rules on how they want to play.
There’s no justifiable reason to slap a price tag on fast travel and that’s the issue most people have. The fact that it was removed from review builds shows that even the devs know how fucking shitty it is. No need to defend a shitty practice.
No. You do not need to limit fast travel for immersion. That doesn’t even make sense.
That’s exactly right.
Most games won’t even let you warp to places you haven’t been yet. Fucking bullshit.
I mean that ain’t that weird? The warpstone isn’t calibrated to the right location yet.
Sounds like excuses.
“Noo, there’s actually this totally reasonable made up reason you can’t just go where tf the developers want you to~! You have to let them waste your time; it’s artistic!”
[edit] I was hoping the first guy would respond. I’m mocking him, to be clear. :p
And you’re the queen of England?
Mixed feelings about that - it sounds like you can still access those features so I don’t think it really affects the base game at all. From what I remember about the first game, you had to be sparing on the waystones to start with, and it required a bit of work to get the item necessary to redo your character - so not much has really changed there. On the other hand, adding these microtransactions in the first place is a stupid idea and the publishers are shooting themselves in the foot by adding them. Should that really change the reviews of the base game though?
Having limited access to a resource to then hook you on microtransactions is from mobile game design. It’s literally a freemium mechanic being put into an already upscaled price game.
It’s one of the most abusive and addictive ways to develop a game, and you want to portray that positively.
I fucking hate gamers. We’ve been having this conversation since the horse Armor DLC for Oblivion yet here we fucking are.
Correct, it’s part of their design, you create a problem then You sell the solution.
Except having limited access to a resource is from the original game. There’s this lie being sold online that it was an intentional decision for DD2 to try and sell more microtransactions, but limited fast travel is a hallmark of the original Dragon’s Dogma. People are so quick to blind themselves to hatred that they haven’t noticed that Capcom has added completely pointless microtransactions to every one of their games for at least the past 5 years. You can drag them through the coals if you want to over that, and it’s as fair a reason to boycott Capcom games as any, but it’s not a reason to start going after games journalists.
Except having limited access to a resource is from the original game.
The original game that ultimately saw success in its “Dark Arisen” release that had an eternal ferrystone.
Don’t go trying to redefine history here, I played both copies of the original.
There’s this lie being sold online that it was an intentional decision for DD2 to try and sell more microtransactions, but limited fast travel is a hallmark of the original Dragon’s Dogma.
There is no lie in the complaints. Ferrystones are not a limited resource in Dragons Dogma 2. You just have to pay microtransactions for it. You are lying about the game to defend it. To me, this level of denial comes off as coping.
I want you to admit that ferrystones are not a limited resource in Dark Arisen and same with Dragons dogma 2. And I want you to admit the differences in how they are offered to the player.
Or go lie to somebody else.
If what I read is correct, there is a quest involving a spinx in late game that offers an eternal ferrystone. Now maybe I’ve been lied to, but it sounds pretty reasonable and would track with what was added to Dark Arisen. If you really, desperately, for whatever reason want to skip playing like 80% of the game and spend $30 to fast travel everywhere, I guess you could spend it on ferrystones? Nobody should do that though, it completely breaks the flow and atmosphere of the game, and they are meant to be a limited resource in the early game of both Dragon’s Dogma 1 and 2. You can hate that decision all you want, but don’t try to distort facts to fit your own rage. All the microtransactions are pointless and unnecessary.
Edit: I looked back through the Sphinx again, killing it grants you an eternal wakestone. So currently no way to get infinite fast travel, but yes to infinite lives.
Sounds like you want to change topics from your whole lies bit for some reason? Weird. Changing your defense from it being lies and a limited resource while not admitting the predatory nature of this game design. I dont care to argue your new bad faith points as you did not take the last stance fairly. I can’t stand predatory microtransactions. The arrogance of people who don’t care about it invading the game just allow further shit like this to fester.
I guess if we’re changing topics, we can focus on the predatory character customization microtransaction. They locked any new saves or character creation to limit people to a microtransaction. That’s pretty fucked up too.
Or we can go into Capcoms’ recent attempts to take down mods from their old games. https://readwrite.com/capcom-backtracks-quickly-and-removes-drm-after-players-rebel/
There are plenty of problematic things to hit on here.
Have you tried to turn a circle in the main city on low settings?
Doesn’t like that topic is being changed -> changes topic.
Also, you talk about eternal ferrystones, he talks about eternal ferrystones.
Carefull with the Cheeto-dust there my man.
Also, can you tell me exactly where the ‘new save or character creation’ microtransaction is? I can’t seem to find it.
Also, character customisation is easily done by buying an item in game for a negligible amount of gold.
Your whole reply reeks of misinfo and bad faith acting. You’re spreading misinfo. Woof.
I get it, you hate MTX, we all do. But there is no point in spreading idiocy.
Oh I don’t want to portray it positively. I agree it’s shit. It just seemed to me that it’s possible (personally at least) to play the game and ignore the microtransactions. But no doubt that’s not the case for everyone
I kinda think we should go right off and bomb all the reviews, with the hope that it teaches devs to stop doing stuff like this.
Dark patterns are malicious and antagonistic against the end user. The microtransactions add arsenic to the tea.
From what I’ve read, it seems to be a compromise to me. I imagine the dev team didn’t want to do it but compromised with the publisher and in reality they probably don’t want you to buy the dlc, as it defeats some of the design decisions. There’s a good pcmag article detailing the dlc and how impactful it is. My guess is that the general opinion of any reviewers would remain the same regardless (with the context of the pcmag article).
I scrolled through the mtx and… there is literally nothing in there that anyone should ever buy. Exception for the character redesign item, but if this is like first game, you can redesign your character between playthroughs.
I feel like there’s some kinda argument here between the director and whatever suit wanted mtx. That stuff in the store is literally pointless to buy. RC? People will rent your pawn, that’s how you get it. Wakestones? Gold in game.
Only thing I’d consider buying would be the eternal ferrystone, but that defeats the flow of the game, and they aren’t selling it.
I think if people knew that you’d eventually unlock infinite fast travel in end-game anyway, maybe people would be less insane? but realistically the whiniest bitching is coming from people who just want to be mad, so trying to add context won’t help.
It’s stupid as hell because the game has legitimate issues with performance and some baffling choices, but everyone’s upset with Capcom for…doing the same thing they’ve done for 5 years without any complaint.
Now imagine people would actually play the game and realize that you actually don’t want to FT because it is honestly fun to explore.
But that would require them to actually care about the game… lol.
No kidding. I’m now onto the second kingdom, and have acquired like 11 ferrystones. I’ve used maybe one all game just for pacing reasons. Why would I want to fast travel and miss out on the griffin attacks? Every journey becomes a grand adventure with like several stories of heroic valor, and they’re interspersed with little downtimes where you get to have pawn chatter.
its the stuff from the deluxe edition. And it isn’t “buy currency whenever” mtx. just the deluxe stuff if you didn’t order deluxe. I got the base game and have already accumulated all this stuff.
Aside from the controversy, why does every medieval game look as ugly as oblivion?
Because they’re old-tymey. Everything was sepia tinted and muddy back then, and they didn’t have fancy dyes or expensive rendering software to make many polygons.
We tried this already - getting ethics in game journalism.
It didn’t work so well.
Can’t tell if you’re joking or not, but gamergate was absolutely not about “ethics in game journalism.”
Did they edit their comment? Neither they nor the article mentioned gamergate.
“It’s about ethics in gaming journalism” was the common refrain for Gamergate proponents.
Not joking. It absolutely was about ethics, at first. The initial kickoff was the boyfriend accusing the girl (Zoë Quinn?) of sleeping with someone else for a better review. That’s ethics in a nutshell. I don’t think that anyone really cared about the game, or who was involved, but rather that the state of the industry was such that you could accuse a well known game reviewer of being unethical, and it was more believable than not.
The fact is, reviewers had already sold their souls and a AAA game get anything less than a 90%. Had reviewers had better ethics, probably no one would have believed the boyfriend, and the entire story would have been a nothing-burger.
Of course it went off the rails after that, the fact that the boyfriend was lying didn’t help, but for a brief moment it looked like there might actually be game news/review industry reform. It was a glorious 24 or so hours.
Gran Turismo 7 pulled the same shit. I’m still pissed about that one. Plus the lack of single player content basically means I haven’t even played the game since shortly after launch. The grind without mtx is crazy boring.
It’s not going to change much.
It’s crazy dumb they created the controversy but the game is fully complete and excellent.
It’s insane they didn’t see this blowing up in their faces 🤦♂️.
Clearly you haven’t looked at steam. People can’t make it past the character creator due to the constant crashing
It’s anything BUT fully complete
Lololol I’m like 50 hours in no issue
They say in the article that reviewers were told about the microtransactions. Then they mention that one reviewer said he didn’t read the notes that were sent by Capcom. Why would this reviewer need to go back and rescore the game? If he enjoyed it without knowing about the microtransactions, they clearly don’t matter to the gameplay.
The review copies had no microtransactions. They were added at release.
That’s my point. Reviewers gave it great scores when there weren’t any microtransactions and they haven’t changed anything in the game to make those microtransactions important. You can play the game the exact same way the reviewers did by just ignoring them.
~~You misunderstand, the mtx were essentially unlocked in the reviewers versions, not simply missing features. ~~
Edit: apparently my last edit didn’t get submitted somehow, but I’m sorry about being misinformed and unintentionally spreading it. What I was told was wrong as it was spin that I read of what did happen: the those features were unlocked in the reviews… because they’re in the game, this was conveniently left out. Then I misread that as the games otherwise not having those features.
I haven’t seen anything that has said that. I couldn’t find that in the article either.
Edit: I don’t care about the downvotes, but surely one of you could’ve replied with a link showing me where it says that reviewers had the mtx unlocked for them while reviewing.
Bunch of dumbasses just want to be angry for no reason, and it really shows.
Yea, Lemmy is fucking insufferable with this game. If the complaints were valid I’d understand (1 save file, performance). But this senseless parrotted incessant whinging about mtx for items that are easily obtained in game is just so weird to me. They want to be mad. The game is incredibly fun and I’m having a blast playing it. Never even once have I felt the need to even look at the mtx page because everything is just that readily available.
See edit
Care to provide sources? I had a press preview of the game before release and nothing changed in my version, so I REALLY wonder where you get that information from.
You have no clue what the fuck you’re talking about, spreading misinfo. You’re part of the problem with the modern internet, rat.
Rat?
Which basic features? Almost everything people are complaining about can be obtained in game. I understand the dissatisfaction with the performance issues, but I am failing to understand this current discourse considering that capcom has been doing this in all their previous games.
I heard that fast travel is very limited, but that you can buy fast travel items for real world money.
The problem with that is: the goal of the game makers should be to make the game as enjoyable and fun as possible to sell as many copies as possible.
However, with such micro transactions your goal now is to add annoying stuff to the a level that maximises your profits. How much you can annoy your customers, depends mainly on the conditioning of your target audience.
So the more of that stuff is accepted and financially rewarded by customers, the more annoying games will become to increase the “need” to sell you a relieve.
I assume this discourse of making the game not enjoyable for the sake of maximizing profits is probably from people that didn’t play the first game and haven’t played the new game yet. I know this is a reality in cash grab games, but really doesn’t seem to be the case here.
I see where you’re coming from. There are hard mechanics in many games that are part of what makes the game fun for its players.
However, when I play Dark Souls, I know a part is difficult, because the developers wanted it this way and did not have alternative motives. But when I can pay for difficulty settings, I never know if I’m being “reasonably” challenged or being milked.
If you enjoy the given challenges of this game, good for you. I think many of the critics do, too. However, for them (and me) it’s a matter of principle, because we fear that the situation will get worse - ultimately leading to the mobile gaming industry that uses all of humanity’s knowledge of psychology to make people spend more money than they can afford.
Your argument is correct, however it doesn’t apply to DD2 since the difficulty of acquiring things that are being sold for real money is exactly the same from the first game. If it wasn’t the case I would agree 100% with you.
I do think it is weird the fact they are selling these things, it is quite ridiculous. However, If they wanted to make a lot of money, they didn’t think a lot about it considering that the items that increase your carry capacity are wayyy more interesting and tempting that any of the current ones. Lost opportunity I suppose.
Fast travel for example? Either I allow it or I don’t. But both decision have a huge implication on the game design.
You can get the fast travel stones in game, same thing with wakestones. I can agree it is very unecessary to have these obtainable with real money but this isn’t news for capcom and you can enjoy the game the same way just by not engaging with the cash shop.
Just because it’s nothing new doesn’t make it acceptable for any game, studio or publisher. They are doing this because people are accepting it and know they can get away with it.
Well, they have been doing it for many games including RE and people weren’t reacting the same before, were they? Is just very weird and inconsistent. The game is amazing, people not playing because of something they can just choose not to engage with because they are being misinformed by other people that didn’t even play are just missing out.
That’s the issue right there, you keep justifying this behavior. This is a 70 dollar game from a giant corporation, which you have to pay to play, and they expect you to pay more. MTX have no place here. They are not putting them in game because of the goodness of their hearts, they are doing it because of greed. If they didn’t want you to buy them why would they put them in?
I’m not talking just about this game, this is my opinion about any game. It’s time to put the foot down. They are slowly boiling us like a frog, first with day one dlcs and season passes and now this.
EDIT: Let’s not forget about performance issues for 70 dollars. The real AAA gaming experience.
I see that I need to repeat myself over and over, but here’s another try:
I agree with you. What I fail to understand is why people don’t react consistently to MTX in games. Did people react the same way with RE and DMC? They didn’t. People are spreading misinformation to have more people complain about the game. People were spreading that it is harder to fast travel because they want you to buy the MTX (it isn’t).
Game performance has been fine while playing on the PS5. I thought it was going to be much worse considering what people were talking about on release. But yes, the industry is awful and it seems that playing games on release isn’t a good idea these days. I regret a lot not waiting a few months before playing BG3.
I’m sorry if I misunderstood your comment. Because the industry adjusted people’s expectations and they got the game anyway. I saw threads just like this about MTX in re4.
But it doesn’t matter because we complaining about them are minority, people are gonna buy it anyway, they’re gonna shove more of them in the next game and it’ll break another sales records because nobody cares anymore.
This comment getting downvoted is the perfect illustration of how this is just another circle jerk.
Every single sentence in your comment is just objectively true and not opinion, but nowadays we vote on reality, not opinion it seems.
I already accepted that if you don’t go with the crowd and attempt to bring a small bit of common sense in to certain discussions you are going to have an unpopular opinion.
