When Do Microtransactions become too much

[Nembot]

I`m not a fan of this system to be honest, not one bit. In my opinion it`s just a tool for Mr Gates and friends to have more control over what we buy and when, tantamount to extortion as far as I`m concerned.

I to some extent agree with those that believe that the games we buy should be the finished article, especially as they come with a ?50 price tag, but having had experiences with PC games adding patches, fixes, maps and mods isn`t anything new but they are 99.99% of the time FREE! Also PC games are on average just over half the price of a 360 game so to make us pay for these updates is very wrong.

Having to pay for gamer pictures is also tantamount to theft. Blimey, after paying out ?50 you`d think that these pics could be included on the game disk, tight bastards!

[Brats]

They often are. I've unlocked tons of gamerpics by playing through my games.

There does seem to be a huge amount of misunderstanding (even general ignorance?) surrounding microtransactions. There are loads of statements in this thread alone stating facts that are completely wrong.

[MartyG]

This is when microtransactions become too much: http://www.majornelson.com/archive/2...r-content.aspx

In particular

Name: In-Game Money - $50K
Available in: All regions
Price: 40 Points
Dash Details: Add $50,000 to your game portfolio. It?s not a fortune, but it?s nothing to shake a stick at either. The money will be added directly to your in-game bankroll once you return to gameplay. This is a one-time offer; it cannot be purchased multiple times.

Name: In-Game Money - $100K
Available in: All regions
Price: 75 Points
Dash Details: Fatten your wallet with $100K. Maybe that?ll help you on your way to buying that new Tommy gun you?ve had your eye on. The money will be added directly to your in-game bankroll once you return to gameplay. This is a one-time offer; it cannot be purchased multiple times.

Name: In-Game Money - $250K
Available in: All regions
Price: 150 Points
Dash Details: Add $250,000 to your game portfolio. Now we?re talking some serious cash. The money will be added directly to your in-game bankroll once you return to gameplay. This is a one-time offer; it cannot be purchased multiple times

[Brats]

Now see, I haven't got a problem with this. The Godfather is a purely single player game. If some daft people want to spend real money to download in game money (in turn ruining the game) then let them.

It's no different to spending money on a game genie or other cheat device.

[Dirty Sanchez]

Can those items be earned by playing the game?

If so then they are not a requirement and are a shortcut that a player may wish to take.

Very little difference here from days gone by when a tips/cheats telephone number was supplied with a game to unlock hidden content.

I love the concept myself.

For XBLA you are previewing the real game, not a demo. That bit is free.

For other games as long as the orginal game is released as a whole (eg GRAW) then adding episodes is fine. Some sequels are little more than episodes anyway, so ?10 for GRAW 2 is not outrageous.

As for points for shortcuts, again fine, as long as the items are available by skilfull playing or investing the hours in the game.

Interesting interview with the Lumines guy, basically he is saying Live is how they envisaged the game in the first place. The game equivilent of the Directors Cut Criterion Super Bit on DVD with a shiny case and plastic desk googly. Lumines is a cracking game, they have taken advantage of the popularity of the game and the constraints of the delivery system, fair play to them, they are in business afterall.

[dataDave]

I hope that trend doesn't bleed across to the likes of PSU.

RMT ruins games, and when used in MMORPGS it ruins everyone's experience.

There's nothing worse than partying with a LVL50 White Mage that has all the best gear worth zillions yet doesn't know how to play at all and continuingly gets spells wrong, especially when you've spent 4hrs building the party.

And then you have all the repercussions on the economy, chinese RMT traders synthing high quality foods for very little, mass profit. You simply can't compete in the market.

These ppl should be banned from the game totally.

[MartyG]

If these sell well, I'd suggest it'll be very encouraging to make this sort of stuff available in all games to "get ahead", including MMO, and in particular with MMOs because people want to be kick ass as soon as possible, and it will be pandered to.

Thin edge - you heard it hear first

[dataDave]

Yep, this is why I KNOW Square Enix KNOW ppl like to play like this, or else they'd be banning ten times as many accounts... although when you consider monthly fees they'd be shooting themselves in the feet.

People I play with like to think that RMT isn't such a big problem... although for every 6-man party of RMT you can bet there are at least three-four times that amount buying the gil.

The amount of inexperienced players with overly fantastic gear astounds me.

[Brats]

But the whole life blood of MMOs is the economy. Any MMO that makes money available to people that can afford it is just doomed to failure. That's why people like Blizzard take gold farming so seriously and ban so many thousands of accounts.

No MMO maker would be stupid enough to do this. You heard that here first .

[MartyG]

It won't be skewed to that extent - it'll be stuff to take a short cut to lvl X ( in fact there are MMOs that already do this ) or get Weapon Y - not pay points for gold as in your WoW example which would skew the economy if you could keep farming it, in fact, if kick ass weapon Y was made available on market place, the economy of the game would balance itself out by being worth less if sold in the game. It will happen if people are prepared to pay for the content.

[Lebowski]

I think the main problem we have is regardless of the content a lot of us still see digital downloads as a relatively low value purchase, due to the lack of anything material. Our society is founded on the basis of owning and consuming material possessions and its only in the last few years with the invention of things like itunes that we are coming round to the idea of paying for an item that has no physical form.

Lumines is a great for debating the value of these downloads as it can be easily pigeon holed, it's a puzzle games for a start and these tend to be low on graphical resources when you compare them to something like say dead rising. So they tend to be knocked out as budget releases on anything but handheld games consoles, you also have to rember lumines also had a lot lower development cost on live as it?s a conversion.

If you want an example of price i remember paying ?20 for a copy of bust a move 2 on the playstation when all other playstation releases were still ?40 and ?50,

I think Microsoft has really hit a nerve with gamers and I really do hope Microsoft learn a lesson from it, as creating mistrust in there live arcade at such an early stage is not good for them or for microtrasactions as a whole.

[Dirty Sanchez]

Go read the conversion rates for XBLA and you'll find MS have learnt a great deal..........we download.....we sample......we buy

[Lebowski]

no need to be rude i know the cost of lumines its 10.50 or there abouts for the base pack i think you missed my point completely

oh and you missed

we download...... we sample...... we buy...... we bitch about the lack of content and the top up costs

[Anpanman]

I don't like this buying extra content malarky at all.

Maybe I'm too stuck in my ways and I accept that but as I've mentioned in another similar thread I never bought any of the packs for PGR2 or Links courses.

I hope to get a 360 at some point and I've not looked at how this gamer point system works and to be honest don't care as I'm basically just going to buy the game play it on/offline and that's it.
Same with the achievements really but that's OT sorry.

[Brats]

It won't be skewed to that extent - it'll be stuff to take a short cut to lvl X ( in fact there are MMOs that already do this ) or get Weapon Y - not pay points for gold as in your WoW example which would skew the economy if you could keep farming it, in fact, if kick ass weapon Y was made available on market place, the economy of the game would balance itself out by being worth less if sold in the game. It will happen if people are prepared to pay for the content.

But you're talking about two different things.

Paying to take a short cut to a certain level has merit, especially after an MMO has been established for a while. For a start, the main issue with MMOs are that for the early levels your character is too basic (but that's for another thread) but also that it's no fun for a level 1 characater to be battling with level 50 characters. So if a friend wants to join his friends who have been battling for a while, he's screwed.

A level 10 or 20 character suddenly appearing in a world that has a range of characters has no negative impact on that world. Obviously no-one wants everyone doing this, so the charge actually makes sense. You don't want such a thing to be free, else the first 19 levels become irrelevant.

It's like in WOW they have now allowed users to transfer servers but at a cost. Some WOW fans have complained that they pay enough to Blizzard anyway, but they are missing the point. They payment is to generally discourage server transfers, it's like a tax rather than a cost.

Weapons you can buy as microtransations would ruin an economy. Cheap goods affect all the other goods in the same market. Imagine an MMO where a sword +8 costs 2,000g and a sword + 12 costs 8,000. Now a sword +10 becomes available for download and due to its abundant supply, the price drops to only 500g. Clearly the sword +8 is going to have to become cheaper (else why would anyone bother). Plus who is going to pay the extra 7,500g just to upgrade to the sword +12? The price will drop for this too, until you get to the point where everyone has the most powerful sowrd in the game and where's the fun in that?

It's a simple example, but cheap goods and service as well as currency can easily destroy the simple economy of an MMO.