Admittedly, most of the “Mostly Negative” Steam reviews seem to be reacting to the fact they exist at all, without considering whether they’re actually critical to your progress in the game or not (for clarity, they are not).
I didn’t know we were only allowed to write reviews based on things critical to your progress. I didn’t know how many companions you have or what your character looks like weren’t critical. I bet if we searched even a little we’d find a RockPaperShotgun review of “non critical” game features.
You can get the items for free by finding them or pay barbers in the villages for it instead. Similar to the first game, the first one was just niche so didn’t have a huge crowd throwing fits instead of reading or even playing the game
“Of course they don’t stop progress… you’ll just be stuck grinding for way way longer with our patented unfuntm systems unless you pay, peasant valued consumer”
I love how in your example “perfect” is not having moneygrubbing microtransactions and the “good” compromise we’re supposed to accept is the microtransactions the chose to put in for no purpose other than money
??? Renting companions of your level has always been free, they only cost rift crystals if they are higher than you. Killing strong monsters and getting your pawn rented give plenty resources.
The character creation tome is easy to get, idk what to tell you.
If you want to throw horseshit to a wall, not this one please. If you had played the game you wouldn’t have even mentioned half of what you did.
“They only cost rift crystals if they’re a higher level than you”
Ah yes this is additional value and content that you should pay money for, right? It’s not core gameplay to recruit companions regardless of their level like in almost every fucking game I’ve ever played right?
Imagine licking boot so hard that you actually believe this
Rift crystals are earned by playing just like the first game. Their only purpose is to hire higher level pawns, but you earn them when people pay for your pawn or you complete their quests. It’s part of the interplay of players exchange pawns.
Recent Capcom games have all done this where it’s a great game and right on release they stuff a bunch of micro transactions in for in-game currency but you would have to be an absolute chud to buy any of it because it’s so trivial to earn.
DMCV did the same thing with trying to sell red orbs, the primary upgrade currency, but if you didn’t see people complain about it online, you wouldn’t even notice it in game.
Yeah that’s like the whole problem, not a triviality. I’m sure DD2 is fun. Ive watched a lot of it streamed. Seems cool. I’m not gonna buy it because they did this shit, same reason I didn’t buy DMCV and haven’t bought a Capcom game in years. Stop rewarding scummy companies.
Rift crystals are an in game currency, you don’t need to pay money for it! I’ve been recruiting companions 1-4 lvls above me all the time, I’m lvls 30 now, with the in game currency. The higher the pawn is you get less exp so it’s not something that you should do anyway.
Imagine thinking that renting a LVL 200 companion is core gameplay. Geez…
This game is an improvement over the first one in almost all sides, with great content. It’s stupid reading all this takes from people that clearly have not played it, let alone the original.
And before you mention the eternal ferrystone from the original, that came with the expansion, not the release.
It’s ok that I can buy in game currency for my singer player game! It’s fine! It’s good actually! Recruiting high level companions, a THING THEY BUILT INTO THE BASE GAME DELIBERATELY THEN LET YOU PAY EXTRA FOR, using in game currency I can buy isn’t pay2win. Recruiting companions isn’t even core gameplay if they’re strong enough, bro.
It’s ok that Capcom sent reviewers a game without micro transactions that were in retail! That’s fine, it’s fine! The microtransactions were paying for now were expansions before so it’s uh…it’s better, yeah. I actually prefer my $70 USD single player games to have gameplay benefitting microtransactions.
You sound like you’ve swallowed the boot my guy. You’re so far gone you can’t see the way back. Glad you’re enjoying the game, though. Sounds like it was worth it to you.
I’m gonna ignore all that stuff you extrapolated from my strawman.
Anyway, of course I’m enjoying it! I loved the original and this is the same and more. This is a great game with BS corporate microtransactions sprinkled in. I agree that the MTXs are BS, but saying that the game was designed around baiting the player into using them outs you as someone that wouldn’t enjoy the first one nor the intended gameplay, so it’s kinda pointless dosucssing further.
Have fun lying to yourself about the intended mechanics I guess.
Full price games with microtransactions are negative, end of story. Everybody saying otherwise grew up after they where implemented in every other game so they don’t know better.
They got trained, like animals, to swallow that shit.
I grew up after them. I think they’re fine in certain circumstances. If the game is supposed to have free content updates for weeks and months and whatever else after launch then yeah sure, why not
I get what they mean. A lot of the MTX seems to be items that you genuinely would find very readily in the game. Paying simply gives you a type of “very easy” mode if you’re for some reason inclined.
It’s a…. Strange decision, as it makes the game look bad. But by all accounts it doesn’t really impact the gameplay of the game. It’s just like giving you the option buy Phoenix Downs in Final Fantasy with real money. You… can. You really don’t need to, 98% of players won’t.
It’s goofy more than anything. I guess I’d rather have it rather than day 1 expansion packs like Mass Effect had.
The thing is they made these features as part of the core gameplay then charged for them. It isn’t like you’re paying for a boost or game mode or special companion or something. You’re given the option to earn these features through playing a single player game or pay money and get them faster.
Literally carving out chunks of the base game and offering them up for money as if it is added value. The only value is saving time IN A SINGLE PLAYER GAME. If your single player game has elements that are so tedious or cumbersome that people will literally PAY MORE MONEY to get them on their terms you purposefully built a worse game than you could have.
I got AC:Odyssey during one of the sale cause I dig Greek mythology, had to get cheat engine and spare me the grind for upgrading gears and ship. Like sure you can just keep picking up randomly dropped Epic/Rare and replacement them when you leveling up(there are even player quest that put in specific spot to give you resource for those upgrades, just so other players can farm it) But I ain’t get any time for that, I just cheat engine in max out resource and upgrade my Legendary gears I found through out the game. And you know what? By the end of the game(and I didn’t find every Legendary, like maybe 60~70% of them) it would take me setting the resource to max twice to fully upgrade all my legendary + epic(with perks I like) gears. It would take probably months of my gaming time should I got it on console and can not use cheat engine.
No, upgrade gear is not required to finish the game. But after this experience I decides to never get another Ubisoft AC game nor any RPG on console or with always online feature(which means all transaction are done and authenticated to prevent cheating. ) I’ve done plenty open world, RPG, Monster Hunters without having to cheat. But the recent single player grinding + selling time saver booster pack make me whip out the cheat engine again. And I only cheat those stupid resource gating game that are designed to pad hours in to your play through.
Yeah, they know they are doing though, they are aiming for those that work 9-5 have life and kids and some spare changes and milk them hard. Like this game would take 200 hours to complete fully with X hundreds of hours of post game content that was designed to make your grind, but you can also pay for this [xp booster, resource pack, legendary set, etc] to make sure you can enjoy the post game content if you don’t have the time to grind the game how it’s “meant to be played”.
In my AC:Odessey example, I think at one point the designer might be doing a heavy zelda influenced where you just pick up stuff enemies dropped and the blacksmiths are there for you to repair items broken as resource dump. (which make sense and very fitting of that era and how resource would work) But once that MTX department put their finger in now you have a derailed system. There is a spread sheet that list the hours required to upgrade a legendary piece to which level, and recommended level to get them(as their starting level is fixed and not like the enemy droppped item that matches your level), I saw the numbers and downloaded the cheat engine table the next hour.
Especially ones like Minotaur who just started commenting on Lemmy 3 days ago…
What timing.
Edit: don’t forget that sometimes people post in defederated instances and sometimes app developers for your lemmy app are so behind that shit isn’t even loading for you properly anymore
I again, never said anything about conspiracy, was just pointing out what I was able to see. Like I said in my other comment, I can only see shit you’ve been commenting up to a day ago. So either the app I’m using is busted as fuck, your instance is busted as fuck, or some other option - but I’ve only ever commented on what I was able to see.
Hopefully you understand where I’m coming from here.
I saw this same thing with games like Dead Space 3. They included a cash shop, very likely hard-pushed by some asinine executive. But, you could tell by playing the game, the majority of developers likely tested with that feature off. Was it a fun game? No, but resource starvation was not the reason for that.
Basically it feels like the hands trying to microtransact for singleplayer games are not the same as the ones designing those games to begin with. It still deserves negative attention, just nuance.
You are basically betting on the developers being bad at their jobs and not being able to do what they are clearly trying to do, which is making people but microtransactions.
“They” is far, far, far too encompassing a word. If you’ve worked in any organization such as this, especially these days, they involve so many different companies (yes, more than one studio works on a game now) with so many different teams all under a publishing studio whose head may never have even played any of this genre of game.
So, a developer in one studio is often just trying to make a good RPG in their debug build (and insists no/light fast travel for world-immersion reasons), and only hears over the grapevine “Wait…they took the complaints about no fast-travel and made it a DLC? That sounds terrible, gamers will hate that.” Multiple people across the credits can have varying intentions.
Gamers throw a fit when content is locked behind a paywall because it is somehow unfair. Gamers are currently throwing a fit about content not being locked behind a paywall because that is also somehow unfair. Does that make sense to you?
It seems to me that this publisher heard the complaints about the way microtransactions were being implemented and decided to give people what they were asking for and now they’re getting crucified for it. Gamers got what they wanted. If that wasn’t what they really wanted they should have been asking for something else.
I don’t own this game nor have I ever completed a microtransaction in a major title. My spending habits don’t support the concept in any form. You know what my point is and you’re trying to high-horse your way past it. If you want to take a stand refund the game and vote with your wallet. No one wants to hear complaints about the price of cosmetics and getting in game currency quicker. It’s the most first world problem imaginable.
I dont buy these games, nor do I verbally defend such practices in them. I understand your point, but the real issue is them existing, not the form in which they exist in this case.
The whole “first world problem” is always hilarious when brought up. You can discuss or argue over anything you want, everyone experiences life differently. Just because there’s people starving, that doesnt mean you cant talk about capitalist issues either. Its such a shitty dismissal everytime.
You’re free to call it what you wish. Complaining about voluntary purchases in a video game you also don’t need to buy is a vapid pursuit only engaged in by those with an excess of time and money and a lack of real world problems. If you want to waste your time debating the ethics of such a system existing then be my guest but don’t pretend you’re engaging in some lofty moral exercise. You’re just bored and looking for something to occupy your time so you chose to bitch about something inconsequential on the internet.
I agree that the way they’ve been implemented in many other titles is annoying so I choose not to engage with them in that form. This implementation doesn’t impact anything so why would you be annoyed by it much less take the time to complain about it?
Why? Is there some kind of real cost to changing appearance or fast travel that it needs to be limited? Or is that there solely so they can sell MTX?
I’m playing Baldur’s Gate 3 right now and you can do both at any time for free. It’s literally a standard UI thing across games with large maps and character creators.
Hey, why even have to buy dyes? The game should give them all to you for free. And supplies can be gathered, you should just get infinite supply packs too
I didn’t know we were only allowed to write reviews based on things critical to your progress. I didn’t know how many companions you have or what your character looks like weren’t critical. I bet if we searched even a little we’d find a RockPaperShotgun review of “non critical” game features.
What horseshit.
MTX have become normalized and it’s fucking depressing to see. So many people defend their existence, truly a sad time for the industry.
From what I heard it costs $2 to change your characters appearance. I watched moist criticals video on it kept crashing.
It doesn’t. You can do it in game for free very easily. You really should not get all your opinions from YouTubers
You can get the items for free by finding them or pay barbers in the villages for it instead. Similar to the first game, the first one was just niche so didn’t have a huge crowd throwing fits instead of reading or even playing the game
“Of course they don’t stop progress… you’ll just be stuck grinding for way way longer with our patented unfuntm systems unless you pay,
peasantvalued consumer”deleted by creator
I love how in your example “perfect” is not having moneygrubbing microtransactions and the “good” compromise we’re supposed to accept is the microtransactions the chose to put in for no purpose other than money
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Oh no I ate the onion
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“how many companions you have”
??? Renting companions of your level has always been free, they only cost rift crystals if they are higher than you. Killing strong monsters and getting your pawn rented give plenty resources.
The character creation tome is easy to get, idk what to tell you.
If you want to throw horseshit to a wall, not this one please. If you had played the game you wouldn’t have even mentioned half of what you did.
“They only cost rift crystals if they’re a higher level than you”
Ah yes this is additional value and content that you should pay money for, right? It’s not core gameplay to recruit companions regardless of their level like in almost every fucking game I’ve ever played right?
Imagine licking boot so hard that you actually believe this
Rift crystals are earned by playing just like the first game. Their only purpose is to hire higher level pawns, but you earn them when people pay for your pawn or you complete their quests. It’s part of the interplay of players exchange pawns.
Recent Capcom games have all done this where it’s a great game and right on release they stuff a bunch of micro transactions in for in-game currency but you would have to be an absolute chud to buy any of it because it’s so trivial to earn.
DMCV did the same thing with trying to sell red orbs, the primary upgrade currency, but if you didn’t see people complain about it online, you wouldn’t even notice it in game.
They are ticking a checkbox for the suits.
Yeah that’s like the whole problem, not a triviality. I’m sure DD2 is fun. Ive watched a lot of it streamed. Seems cool. I’m not gonna buy it because they did this shit, same reason I didn’t buy DMCV and haven’t bought a Capcom game in years. Stop rewarding scummy companies.
Oh, shit, people are calling Dragon’s Dogma 2 “DD2”? This will get very confusing with Darkest Dungeon 2 having released last year.
Eh, people will just forget about it and go back to playing AC within a month, anyway.
Assetto Corsa?
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Rift crystals are an in game currency, you don’t need to pay money for it! I’ve been recruiting companions 1-4 lvls above me all the time, I’m lvls 30 now, with the in game currency. The higher the pawn is you get less exp so it’s not something that you should do anyway.
Imagine thinking that renting a LVL 200 companion is core gameplay. Geez…
This game is an improvement over the first one in almost all sides, with great content. It’s stupid reading all this takes from people that clearly have not played it, let alone the original.
And before you mention the eternal ferrystone from the original, that came with the expansion, not the release.
It’s ok that I can buy in game currency for my singer player game! It’s fine! It’s good actually! Recruiting high level companions, a THING THEY BUILT INTO THE BASE GAME DELIBERATELY THEN LET YOU PAY EXTRA FOR, using in game currency I can buy isn’t pay2win. Recruiting companions isn’t even core gameplay if they’re strong enough, bro.
It’s ok that Capcom sent reviewers a game without micro transactions that were in retail! That’s fine, it’s fine! The microtransactions were paying for now were expansions before so it’s uh…it’s better, yeah. I actually prefer my $70 USD single player games to have gameplay benefitting microtransactions.
You sound like you’ve swallowed the boot my guy. You’re so far gone you can’t see the way back. Glad you’re enjoying the game, though. Sounds like it was worth it to you.
I’m gonna ignore all that stuff you extrapolated from my strawman.
Anyway, of course I’m enjoying it! I loved the original and this is the same and more. This is a great game with BS corporate microtransactions sprinkled in. I agree that the MTXs are BS, but saying that the game was designed around baiting the player into using them outs you as someone that wouldn’t enjoy the first one nor the intended gameplay, so it’s kinda pointless dosucssing further.
Have fun lying to yourself about the intended mechanics I guess.
Even if you don’t play mobile games, this is a good read: https://www.darkpattern.games/
You’re not supposed to actually know anything about the game here. This is purely a thread for circlejrrking based off of what YouTubers said
Full price games with microtransactions are negative, end of story. Everybody saying otherwise grew up after they where implemented in every other game so they don’t know better.
They got trained, like animals, to swallow that shit.
I grew up after them. I think they’re fine in certain circumstances. If the game is supposed to have free content updates for weeks and months and whatever else after launch then yeah sure, why not
I get what they mean. A lot of the MTX seems to be items that you genuinely would find very readily in the game. Paying simply gives you a type of “very easy” mode if you’re for some reason inclined.
It’s a…. Strange decision, as it makes the game look bad. But by all accounts it doesn’t really impact the gameplay of the game. It’s just like giving you the option buy Phoenix Downs in Final Fantasy with real money. You… can. You really don’t need to, 98% of players won’t.
It’s goofy more than anything. I guess I’d rather have it rather than day 1 expansion packs like Mass Effect had.
I love how certain consumers seems to have trained away their gag reflex.
The thing is they made these features as part of the core gameplay then charged for them. It isn’t like you’re paying for a boost or game mode or special companion or something. You’re given the option to earn these features through playing a single player game or pay money and get them faster.
Literally carving out chunks of the base game and offering them up for money as if it is added value. The only value is saving time IN A SINGLE PLAYER GAME. If your single player game has elements that are so tedious or cumbersome that people will literally PAY MORE MONEY to get them on their terms you purposefully built a worse game than you could have.
I got AC:Odyssey during one of the sale cause I dig Greek mythology, had to get cheat engine and spare me the grind for upgrading gears and ship. Like sure you can just keep picking up randomly dropped Epic/Rare and replacement them when you leveling up(there are even player quest that put in specific spot to give you resource for those upgrades, just so other players can farm it) But I ain’t get any time for that, I just cheat engine in max out resource and upgrade my Legendary gears I found through out the game. And you know what? By the end of the game(and I didn’t find every Legendary, like maybe 60~70% of them) it would take me setting the resource to max twice to fully upgrade all my legendary + epic(with perks I like) gears. It would take probably months of my gaming time should I got it on console and can not use cheat engine.
No, upgrade gear is not required to finish the game. But after this experience I decides to never get another Ubisoft AC game nor any RPG on console or with always online feature(which means all transaction are done and authenticated to prevent cheating. ) I’ve done plenty open world, RPG, Monster Hunters without having to cheat. But the recent single player grinding + selling time saver booster pack make me whip out the cheat engine again. And I only cheat those stupid resource gating game that are designed to pad hours in to your play through.
Jupp. The thing with selling booster is that the company is saying “our game isn’t worth your time so here is a way to skip playing the game”.
Like wtf? I pay money for a game to pay money to skip the game?
I can’t fathom how people are willing to do that.
Like going to the movies, paying for a ticket, giving the cashier like 10bugs extra and the you go home without watching the movie.
If someone would tell you they do this you would think they are fucking crazy.
Yeah, they know they are doing though, they are aiming for those that work 9-5 have life and kids and some spare changes and milk them hard. Like this game would take 200 hours to complete fully with X hundreds of hours of post game content that was designed to make your grind, but you can also pay for this [xp booster, resource pack, legendary set, etc] to make sure you can enjoy the post game content if you don’t have the time to grind the game how it’s “meant to be played”.
In my AC:Odessey example, I think at one point the designer might be doing a heavy zelda influenced where you just pick up stuff enemies dropped and the blacksmiths are there for you to repair items broken as resource dump. (which make sense and very fitting of that era and how resource would work) But once that MTX department put their finger in now you have a derailed system. There is a spread sheet that list the hours required to upgrade a legendary piece to which level, and recommended level to get them(as their starting level is fixed and not like the enemy droppped item that matches your level), I saw the numbers and downloaded the cheat engine table the next hour.
Especially ones like Minotaur who just started commenting on Lemmy 3 days ago…
What timing.
Edit: don’t forget that sometimes people post in defederated instances and sometimes app developers for your lemmy app are so behind that shit isn’t even loading for you properly anymore
Not everything has to be a conspiracy, stupid people are created often.
Not stating anything as fact.
Just pointing out what facts were there and my obvious feelings about said fact.
But okay ig you can put me in that boat if you really want.
No you aren’t. You just made it up. I have comments going back months
This app I’m using doesn’t show all the posts or the instances you post in are defederated from my instance.
My bad. I’ll delete the og comment
I am not stupid because I have a differing opinion about video games than you do. Touch grass.
No I didn’t? I’ve had this account for months. I’m even a donor
Not only are you conspiratorial - you’re just wrong.
I again, never said anything about conspiracy, was just pointing out what I was able to see. Like I said in my other comment, I can only see shit you’ve been commenting up to a day ago. So either the app I’m using is busted as fuck, your instance is busted as fuck, or some other option - but I’ve only ever commented on what I was able to see.
Hopefully you understand where I’m coming from here.
I saw this same thing with games like Dead Space 3. They included a cash shop, very likely hard-pushed by some asinine executive. But, you could tell by playing the game, the majority of developers likely tested with that feature off. Was it a fun game? No, but resource starvation was not the reason for that.
Basically it feels like the hands trying to microtransact for singleplayer games are not the same as the ones designing those games to begin with. It still deserves negative attention, just nuance.
You are basically betting on the developers being bad at their jobs and not being able to do what they are clearly trying to do, which is making people but microtransactions.
“They” is far, far, far too encompassing a word. If you’ve worked in any organization such as this, especially these days, they involve so many different companies (yes, more than one studio works on a game now) with so many different teams all under a publishing studio whose head may never have even played any of this genre of game.
So, a developer in one studio is often just trying to make a good RPG in their debug build (and insists no/light fast travel for world-immersion reasons), and only hears over the grapevine “Wait…they took the complaints about no fast-travel and made it a DLC? That sounds terrible, gamers will hate that.” Multiple people across the credits can have varying intentions.
Your comment made me giggle. Thanks for the fun!
It “stinks”, but I don’t really care if the game is good without interacting with the MTX at all. I just don’t
Gamers throw a fit when content is locked behind a paywall because it is somehow unfair. Gamers are currently throwing a fit about content not being locked behind a paywall because that is also somehow unfair. Does that make sense to you?
It seems to me that this publisher heard the complaints about the way microtransactions were being implemented and decided to give people what they were asking for and now they’re getting crucified for it. Gamers got what they wanted. If that wasn’t what they really wanted they should have been asking for something else.
Your attitude towards it is why they exist in the game in the first place. There should be no micro-transactions.
The game is a $70 singleplayer experience. It should have no online requirement, no microtransactions.
I don’t own this game nor have I ever completed a microtransaction in a major title. My spending habits don’t support the concept in any form. You know what my point is and you’re trying to high-horse your way past it. If you want to take a stand refund the game and vote with your wallet. No one wants to hear complaints about the price of cosmetics and getting in game currency quicker. It’s the most first world problem imaginable.
I dont buy these games, nor do I verbally defend such practices in them. I understand your point, but the real issue is them existing, not the form in which they exist in this case.
The whole “first world problem” is always hilarious when brought up. You can discuss or argue over anything you want, everyone experiences life differently. Just because there’s people starving, that doesnt mean you cant talk about capitalist issues either. Its such a shitty dismissal everytime.
You’re free to call it what you wish. Complaining about voluntary purchases in a video game you also don’t need to buy is a vapid pursuit only engaged in by those with an excess of time and money and a lack of real world problems. If you want to waste your time debating the ethics of such a system existing then be my guest but don’t pretend you’re engaging in some lofty moral exercise. You’re just bored and looking for something to occupy your time so you chose to bitch about something inconsequential on the internet.
Yet here you are doing the same thing. Pot calling the kettle black.
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So you agree that it is a problem.
I agree that the way they’ve been implemented in many other titles is annoying so I choose not to engage with them in that form. This implementation doesn’t impact anything so why would you be annoyed by it much less take the time to complain about it?
Uh fast travel and character appearance change? This isn’t some extra health potions. They’ve carved off part of the UI.
Selling character changes when you can’t start a new game without deleting all game data and cache.
You can do both of those easily for in game money.
Why? Is there some kind of real cost to changing appearance or fast travel that it needs to be limited? Or is that there solely so they can sell MTX?
I’m playing Baldur’s Gate 3 right now and you can do both at any time for free. It’s literally a standard UI thing across games with large maps and character creators.
Hey, why even have to buy dyes? The game should give them all to you for free. And supplies can be gathered, you should just get infinite supply packs too
You uhhh… You buy dyes and supplies?
Pay no attention to Asterion in the corner.