Micro-Transactions in Fully Priced Games.

Call Me Jimmy

aaronh007 wrote: »

Veni Vidi Vici have a piece which describes the Forza farce very well.



Which is quite frankly insulting to those that bought the game.

I am not even considering getting a new console or any games but from cursory reading of news about it, the formula one car has been prominent in the advertising of Forza 5. Frankly I would be very pissed off, and I can't quite believe that it would cost the price of the game again to get this much advertised (digital) car.

Surely this information was at least available before purchasing the software. Unfortunately, if reviewers etc. mentioned this and people bought it knowing these facts I have no sympathy for them. But if it was essentially underhanded advertising that misled someone I would feel very aggrieved and would make a point of not buying anything from the publisher/developer again.

Once this stuff comes out, people who buy it knowingly should not be allowed a breath of complaint as they are the people companies are (at the moment, justifiably) banking on.

Jet Black

I dont mind if it's just cosmetic stuff like TF2 but I wouldn't buy a game that then has micro transactions restrict or give you a disadvantage. I didnt bother with dead space 3 because of this.

Slightly off topic but a guy sold one weapon in tf2 for about €4000 today. Crazy money for a digital item.

Shiminay

I had a further thought about this...

There are certain game types that attract certain gamer types.

Your serious car sim petrol heads may not have any sort of problem with these sorts of measures at all, so for all the fuss that we might make about the Forza example, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that the target audience who may never buy another game this year (or within the next 6-12 months) will still consider it a worthy way to spend their money.

I don't think it unfair to suggest that amongst the regular readers here we've got a pretty reasonable monthly spend on games. This sort of thing might bring that car sim enthusiast's spend more in line with the rest of us.

Another fine example of this would be The Sims. It has a MASSIVE fan base and with about what, a dozen expansions so far for the Sims 3 (and the Sims 4 on its way), as well as a micro-transaction supported marketplace for new items in-game, there's very little noise out of that particular community about this (I'm open to correction here, it's not something I follow very closely).

Call Me Jimmy

Jet Black wrote: »

I dont mind if it's just cosmetic stuff like TF2 but I wouldn't buy a game that then has micro transactions restrict or give you a disadvantage. I didnt bother with dead space 3 because of this.

Slightly off topic but a guy sold one weapon in tf2 for about €4000 today. Crazy money for a digital item.

Well I suppose you could liken it to someone paying 100,000 euro for a painting. Absolutely nuts to me, but different strokes.

Dravokivich

Shiminay wrote: »

I had a further thought about this...

There are certain game types that attract certain gamer types.

Your serious car sim petrol heads may not have any sort of problem with these sorts of measures at all, so for all the fuss that we might make about the Forza example, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that the target audience who may never buy another game this year (or within the next 6-12 months) will still consider it a worthy way to spend their money.

I don't think it unfair to suggest that amongst the regular readers here we've got a pretty reasonable monthly spend on games. This sort of thing might bring that car sim enthusiast's spend more in line with the rest of us.

Another fine example of this would be The Sims. It has a MASSIVE fan base and with about what, a dozen expansions so far for the Sims 3 (and the Sims 4 on its way), as well as a micro-transaction supported marketplace for new items in-game, there's very little noise out of that particular community about this (I'm open to correction here, it's not something I follow very closely).

The enthusiasts, wouldnt be likely to go for the AAA level games. Theres a whole genre of sim that'd be more suited which makes the likes of forza arcadey.

_Puma_

Shiminay wrote: »

I had a further thought about this...

There are certain game types that attract certain gamer types.

Your serious car sim petrol heads may not have any sort of problem with these sorts of measures at all, so for all the fuss that we might make about the Forza example, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that the target audience who may never buy another game this year (or within the next 6-12 months) will still consider it a worthy way to spend their money.

I don't think it unfair to suggest that amongst the regular readers here we've got a pretty reasonable monthly spend on games. This sort of thing might bring that car sim enthusiast's spend more in line with the rest of us.

Another fine example of this would be The Sims. It has a MASSIVE fan base and with about what, a dozen expansions so far for the Sims 3 (and the Sims 4 on its way), as well as a micro-transaction supported marketplace for new items in-game, there's very little noise out of that particular community about this (I'm open to correction here, it's not something I follow very closely).

Id actually think the complete opposite of this. These Micro transactions are more aimed at the casual players of Forza who dont want to put in the Time gated credits to achieve new shiny cars. However it is now also the only option for collector enthusiasts due to the gimping of the reward system to make way for the micro transactions. In any case id doubt motor enthusiasts would appreciate the Driving simulation in Forza and would be less incilned to pump more money into it because of this. Forza enthusiast on the other hand..

I read a PR laden article from the Developers of Forza about the reason they have the prices so high was due to keeping certain cars "Rare"....in a single player game that I have already paid full price for! Using micro transactions as a substitute for game progression is such cynical move by any game developer, be it your free to play candycrush or your AAA console exclusive release. Id love to hear from other professional game designers and what they think about the micro transactions in fully priced games like Forza. Its like one of the big No-No's you would learn in college when doing game design.

Im not too familiar with the Sims in fairness but wouldn't these items be more in the vein of new expanded content that you would buy seperate to the core game? Kinda like the Borderlands example from earlier and in the main cosmetic items?

Another major bugbear I have with this pricing model and the industry in general is that it was never transparent what exactly the pricing model was going to be or implemented until after reviews went out. Hell most reviews even neglected to mention the micro transactions in their review, with Eurogamer being the only one I can think of that actually did. Did they review Debug versions of the game that had the Micro Transactions not implemeted? Why would they neglect to mention a major component of the game progression system in a review? Transparencey is the key here and it looks to me that the micro transactions were carefully kept under wraps until after the game was released.

COYVB

_Puma_ wrote: »

put in 2000 hours of grinding currency

Spent 4-5 hours playing Forza yesterday, and between my racing and what my Drivatar had done while I was at work I increased my currency by a million in that time before going to bed. That was one session where I was playing the very early races, then doing rival mode for 4-5 laps, then onto the next race in the event.

I'm not sure I buy this 2000 hours thing - isn't the most expensive car in the game only 6 million? I could buy that by Sunday, comfortably, probably without getting out of the first batch of events...

_Puma_

COYVB wrote: »

Spent 4-5 hours playing Forza yesterday, and between my racing and what my Drivatar had done while I was at work I increased my currency by a million in that time before going to bed. That was one session where I was playing the very early races, then doing rival mode for 4-5 laps, then onto the next race in the event.

I'm not sure I buy this 2000 hours thing - isn't the most expensive car in the game only 6 million? I could buy that by Sunday, comfortably, probably without getting out of the first batch of events...

Your right fail on my part about the 2000 hours. It was €2000 to buy all the cars through the tokens not 2000 hours to amass the credits. From having a look at the Forza forums people are coming up with a figure closer to 1000 hours

Here is an example:
119 Races
9 Hours 50 Minutes and 28 Seconds of Driving Time
Winnings From Races 1,000,595 ( I do have roughly 900,000 more than that from my Drivatar, Rivals, and Forza Rewards though)
Total Credits Currently: 1,952,140

Basically, I have only purchased upgrades and cars absolutely necessary to compete. So, CR per hour of driving is at a whopping 102,101 based solely on race winnings. I got this by taking 1,000,595 CR/9.8 Hours=102,101 CR/hr

Now lets see how much drive time I have to put in to get all of the cars at this rate...102,536,000/102,101=1,004 Hours of Driving Time

It will take ~42 real life days of driving for 24 hours straight to get every car at this rate. That doesn't even include the time spent in the menus buying/upgrading/tuning or the credits you have to spend on cars and upgrades in order to progress either. Those kinds of maths are way over my head so I'm not going to go there.

ancapailldorcha

_Puma_ wrote: »

Your right fail on my part about the 2000 hours. It was €2000 to buy all the cars through the tokens not 2000 hours to amass the credits. From having a look at the Forza forums people are coming up with a figure closer to 1000 hours

1,000 hours? You'd invest less time in the likes of Skyrim. Mainstream reviews read more like advertisements nowadays. The likes of IGN are too afraid of losing exclusivity rights to perform actual criticism. And don't get me started on so-called gaming journalism awards.
I just hope Totalbiscuit and those like him can keep doing what they do as they seem to actually care about their hobby and want the best for the industry.

johnny_ultimate

COYVB wrote: »

Spent 4-5 hours playing Forza yesterday, and between my racing and what my Drivatar had done while I was at work I increased my currency by a million in that time before going to bed. That was one session where I was playing the very early races, then doing rival mode for 4-5 laps, then onto the next race in the event.

I'm not sure I buy this 2000 hours thing - isn't the most expensive car in the game only 6 million? I could buy that by Sunday, comfortably, probably without getting out of the first batch of events...

So over a day's worth of playing to unlock a single car, assuming you don't spend the currency on any other cars or features over the course of those 24-30 hours?

Sorry, but that's a staggering waste of the player's time and effort. And I wish I could find anything near 4-5 hours a day to play games: if I could, grinding for an unlockable isn't particular appealing.

Days 298

As a casual game player this sh*t annoys me. I buy a game, for €60 I expect the game. Not some of it. Fair enough if it takes time to get it all but tbh micro transactions put me off getting the game. Especial day 1 dlcs. F*ck off I bought the game yet you are withholding some of it to ransom

COYVB

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

So over a day's worth of playing to unlock a single car, assuming you don't spend the currency on any other cars or features over the course of those 24-30 hours?

Sorry, but that's a staggering waste of the player's time and effort. And I wish I could find anything near 4-5 hours a day to play games: if I could, grinding for an unlockable isn't particular appealing.

I rarely get that kind of time to play in my spare time, yesterday was a bit of an anomaly. I think the complainants here are doing it a little wrong. For example; winning base race with all assists on might earn you 4000CR. Turning some (or all) of the assists off gives you a bonus percentage, mine is about 30%. Then for manufacturer affinity I get 15% extra again. Then, when the race is done you hit X to go into rivals mode, which will earn you at least double just for beating the time of the opponent ahead of you on the leaderboards, plus the same bonus percentages for assists off and manufacturer affinity.

I'm levelling up every second race, and earning about 15,000CR minimum every event. It's certainly not grinding either, I'm playing exactly how I normally would. I've also only bought one car, because I rarely spend in-game money until much later on in games - no point wasting it on the slower motors. I'm also not playing the game to unlock stuff, I'm playing the game because it's an incredibly fun racer. I'm not a big car guy, so I have no idea the ins and outs of the cars in the game - I just want to pick one and race it until it stops being competitive, then buy the best replacement I can and repeat the cycle

Now, I'm not saying that it's a bit silly having stuff priced so highly, or that this isn't an epic gouge job, I'm just pointing out that it's NOWHERE near as bad as is being made out. Like the guy quoted in one of the posts above has only made a million from almost ten hours of racing - I did that from 3 and a bit yesterday, and I'm not that good at the game (best times per track are usually between 2000-15000th in the world)

_Puma_

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

1,000 hours? You'd invest less time in the likes of Skyrim. Mainstream reviews read more like advertisements nowadays. The likes of IGN are too afraid of losing exclusivity rights to perform actual criticism. And don't get me started on so-called gaming journalism awards.
I just hope Totalbiscuit and those like him can keep doing what they do as they seem to actually care about their hobby and want the best for the industry.

Interesting point, what is the most amount of hours you have put into a game from your Library? Mine is probably Guild wars at about 300 hours(~1.25 years and it is my MMO of choice atm, which I pretty much played exclusively for about half that time. Most of this time is in PVP realm play WvW. Cannot see myself putting in the same amount over the next while unless there is a major expansion). For a single player game it is Skyrim at about 150 hours since release and I played it extensively using Mods to freshen things up a bit.

ancapailldorcha

I've put in just shy of 200 hours into Final Fantasy X as it was my first RPG. On Steam, it'd be not too far short of 100 hours into Mass Effect 2. I think I'd want a proper rig before attempting Skyrim.
I've heard nothing but praise about Guild Wars but I just don't trust myself not to get sucked into it.

Banjo

I'm reading _Puma_'s post above about their experience with the first day's play and I really do fail to see the problem with the reward structure. You play the game the way you want to play it over a week or two, you will naturally be able to unlock a bunch of cars, depending on how expensive your tastes are. If you want performance, spend your money pimping the car. You want to complete the collection, you have to work like a dog.

Did none of you grow up in the world where if you wanted to see the end credits for a video game you either had to be preternaturally good or own a lot of 10p pieces?

I appreciate - you bought the game, you want access to everything on the disk. "I bought this disk in good faith, Joe". The sad truth is you don't have some god-given right to access that stuff. Maybe 1000 hours of grinding is excessive but there are 200+ f'ing cars to unlock! That's a lot of cars. If they hand you all of the keys at once, how many of them are you really going to drive?

I was appalled reading about that F1 car from the ads costing millions of in-game credit, that's nuts, but then I didn't know how long it takes to earn the credit - if you can unlock it in about a week's reasonable play then what's the big deal? It's clearly the flagship car. It should not be easily earned. If you get every car after 5 minutes, where's the incentive to play? Where are the bragging rights when you roll up to the starting line in your pimped up wheels?

My only complaint would be that you can buy the same car with real money. The Earned car should look different so people know what kind of player they're dealing with.

At the end of the day, as long as you can't buy any advantage that you can't also earn, what's the big whoop-de-doo?

_Puma_

Banjo wrote: »

I'm reading _Puma_'s post above about their experience with the first day's play and I really do fail to see the problem with the reward structure. You play the game the way you want to play it over a week or two, you will naturally be able to unlock a bunch of cars, depending on how expensive your tastes are. If you want performance, spend your money pimping the car. You want to complete the collection, you have to work like a dog.

Did none of you grow up in the world where if you wanted to see the end credits for a video game you either had to be preternaturally good or own a lot of 10p pieces?

I appreciate - you bought the game, you want access to everything on the disk. "I bought this disk in good faith, Joe". The sad truth is you don't have some god-given right to access that stuff. Maybe 1000 hours of grinding is excessive but there are 200+ f'ing cars to unlock! That's a lot of cars. If they hand you all of the keys at once, how many of them are you really going to drive?

I was appalled reading about that F1 car from the ads costing millions of in-game credit, that's nuts, but then I didn't know how long it takes to earn the credit - if you can unlock it in about a week's reasonable play then what's the big deal? If you get every car after 5 minutes, where's the incentive to play? Where are the bragging rights when you roll up to the starting line in your pimped up wheels?

My only complaint would be that you can buy the same car with real money. The Earned car should look different so people know what kind of player they're dealing with.

At the end of the day, as long as you can't buy any advantage that you can't also earn, what's the big whoop-de-doo?

Of course there should be content that is either timegated or unlocked via skill etc.. this is a common method Game Designers use to to implement game progression. It has always been this way. However what we are seeing in Forza is the introduction of MT to circumvent the timegating. The insidius part of this is they have gimped the reward system(No more car rewards, less Credits) to make way for the MT system. Without MT's you are looking at timegating that far exceed the Design Time period any user can be expected to put into the game. If you ever get into game design this would be a big topic. Maximising and balancing the content unlock time with regard to a maximum designe time a user can be expected to play your game for.

COYVB

Less credits is not true

And I've been getting free cars gifted to me, I'm not sure why though, but the last 2 days I logged in I had a new free car waiting for me

Banjo

Starting low gives them scope for boosting the rewards over certain events - whether it's double XP weekends, getting you to race for your country in an online endurance/long distance race, earn a car by completing task X in time limit Y, whatever promotion they want to do, and the harder it is to earn credits the more likely it is that players will lap them up.

I do understand you're point. And you may well be right, but if unlocking all of the content is within the reach of most of the players of the game, I personally feel that you have the balance wrong. It should also be noted that unlocking everything is not within the financial reach of most players, so at least the playing field is somewhat level - 100% is for the very rich or the very dedicated.

I might sound uncaring, but then I bought Guitar Hero III on the Wii, which used Slash playing Velvet Revolver's "Slither" in the ad, and that song was only available as paid-for DLC. And the Wii didn't support DLC in any shape or form. So while you can earn the cars, no matter how hard it might be, I have no sympathy

Sonics2k

_Puma_ wrote: »

Interesting point, what is the most amount of hours you have put into a game from your Library? Mine is probably Guild wars at about 300 hours(~1.25 years and it is my MMO of choice atm, which I pretty much played exclusively for about half that time. Most of this time is in PVP realm play WvW. Cannot see myself putting in the same amount over the next while unless there is a major expansion). For a single player game it is Skyrim at about 150 hours since release and I played it extensively using Mods to freshen things up a bit.

Back in my Warcraft playing days I probably racked up hundreds of days worth of play, but I'd been playing from release up until last year on a hardcore PvP and PvE basis.

My next highest played game would be Skyrim or Final Fantasy 7.

Skyrim sits at about 300 hours and FF7 would be a few hundred too for each play through.

The idea of playing a single player game for 1000 hours is just baffling to me, especially a racing game.

_Puma_

Banjo wrote: »

Starting low gives them scope for boosting the rewards over certain events - whether it's double XP weekends, getting you to race for your country in an online endurance/long distance race, earn a car by completing task X in time limit Y, whatever promotion they want to do, and the harder it is to earn credits the more likely it is that players will lap them up.

I do understand you're point. And you may well be right, but if unlocking all of the content is within the reach of most of the players of the game, I personally feel that you have the balance wrong. It should also be noted that unlocking everything is not within the financial reach of most players, so at least the playing field is somewhat level - 100% is for the very rich or the very dedicated.

I might sound uncaring, but then I bought Guitar Hero III on the Wii, which used Slash playing Velvet Revolver's "Slither" in the ad, and that song was only available as paid-for DLC. And the Wii didn't support DLC in any shape or form. So while you can earn the cars, no matter how hard it might be, I have no sympathy

The guitar Hero thing would probably be a bit of misleading advertisement more than anything in my opinion, again that games model would be similar to the borderlands example from earlier. RRP + Additional MT content.

What we see in Forza is RRP with severely limited progression rate with MT to improve this progression rate. Additional MT content to come in the form of car packs. It is a new business model entirely in terms of console games. We see it in F2P games on the PC but never to the extent that it is used for a fully RRP AAA title.

The fact that other ways such as gifting cars or earning them through rewards further limits the ability to improve your progression rate. In GT5 some cars were only available through completing a certain event, again another means of progression through skill that is not available in Forza to make way for the MT's. Bad Game design would see progression rate veering into farming if you have to compete in the same car over and over again and not allow for the flexibility of using other cars the more time you put in, just so you can save up for the next shiny and further your progression through the game.

I know I am focusing on Forza here a bit and I'm not saying that it is alone in this but what I am really trying to get at is this new Business model seems to be limiting the ability to fully experience a game when you pay a RRP for it. Game Progression can be severely limited in this model to incentivise the MT's, otherwise what is the point of them and just have the traditional DLC by themselves.

SolvableKnave

COYVB wrote: »

Less credits is not true

And I've been getting free cars gifted to me, I'm not sure why though, but the last 2 days I logged in I had a new free car waiting for me

Possibly due to this:
http://ie.ign.com/articles/2013/11/28/big-changes-inbound-for-forza-5-economy-following-fan-feedback

NTMK

Banjo wrote: »

I was appalled reading about that F1 car from the ads costing millions of in-game credit, that's nuts, but then I didn't know how long it takes to earn the credit - if you can unlock it in about a week's reasonable play then what's the big deal? It's clearly the flagship car. It should not be easily earned. If you get every car after 5 minutes, where's the incentive to play? Where are the bragging rights when you roll up to the starting line in your pimped up wheels?

Heres the thing though if they had made it that the only way you could get this car is through grinding no one would give two ****s and the car would be rare like the devs claim. Inserting a MT for more than half the price of the game is just nuts

In racing games its never taking a week to unlock a car in any game for me 2 days at most and there was real bragging rights attached to it

Dermighty

Company of Heroes 1:

• 2 armies.
• 3 commander trees in each army each with unique abilities.

Company of Heroes 2:

• 2 armies.
• 5+ commanders per army.
• set amount of commander abilities but each commander has a different combination of those abilities.
• pay to unlock some of the commanders.

One of those games was great.

One of those games was not.

_Puma_

Dermighty wrote: »

Company of Heroes 1:

• 2 armies.
• 3 commander trees in each army each with unique abilities.

Company of Heroes 2:

• 2 armies.
• 5+ commanders per army.
• set amount of commander abilities but each commander has a different combination of those abilities.
• pay to unlock some of the commanders.With some of the paid OP

One of those games was great.

One of those games was not.

The best thing Relic can do with that game is to open up Commanders to all. Keep the MT's for skins and Theatre of War content and everybody is happy. Pretty much all the major competitive players have left and the player-base is now a fraction of what it was.

Not having the commanders available just artificially limits the gameplay and makes it impossible to keep balanced which is a shame because before they were introduces it wasn't at all half bad.

Saying that there is still some important features that are missing, that would be a staple for any RTS, like the ability to play on a custom server. Really think these were omitted after a deadline was imposed after the Sega takeover.