There was never any need. All the micro transactions were just time skips for the dumb. The systems are the same dragons dogma systems they had in the first one. They didn't artificially change things to be grinder. They just put in paid for cheats.
If you want to use them, that's fine, and certainly, this over paying for it. But people framing this as a need is bad. Which is expected of eurogamers headlines the past few years.
Nobody has ever claimed you need them to finish the game.
The frequently spoken rule of thumb for micro-transactions being "not a big deal" is that they should be cosmetic only if the base game isn't free.
This game's micro-transactions are gameplay modifying items and in-game currency packs. That's a violation of the rule of thumb, so lots of us are saying it's a big deal.
I don't want this normalized. Because if it becomes the norm then full pay to win is much easier to normalize.
But even without that fear, it's absolutely just gross on its own.
They deserve all of the negative reviews and press they're getting for it.
You can frame this as I don't like non cosmetic microtransactions if you like. But you have to agree that isn't what 99% of the online discourse is doing. Almost everyone is making statements that are not true because they want to feel outraged and want others to feel outraged, and because they have been lied to by another person's outrage.
It's a hurricane of lies, and it's honestly been worse on lemmy than on reddit.
If someone is telling lies they should be called out for it, but in matter-of-fact way to avoid pointless drama, while providing sources for the truth.
I have seen lots of "it's not that bad get over it" kind of posts but none with any convincing reason why we should accept dark patterns like this in games.
This is a slippery slope fallacy. Adding paid for cheats in single player games doesn't make pay to win more normalised if you have a sense of a moral limit. My limit is when game design is changed to account for microtransations. Shadow of Morder was horrible because the game was almost unplayable without it's boosters. Dragons Dogma is the same game.
If Elden Ring came out and had boosters I'd feel the same way. I'd ignore them and feel weird about people who used them. But it literally doesn't effect the game for me or my experience if they existed or didn't
Tell that to the horse armor lol back in the day no one would buy a game with these kind of MTX and we would laugh at it. But now we're saying "it's not that bad come on, it's still a good game". The slippery slope is very much a thing.
No one was saying "no one would buy a game with these kinds of MTX" Skyrim was already out and wildly successful at that point and secondly the Skyrim horse Armor criticisms were amount Bethesda adding paid mods to get cuts of all mods which is a hugely different situation. When Diablo IV and Street Fighter created extremely overpriced costumes we laugh at them because it's stupid to assume anyone is going to buy them
Oh, my dear, sweet summer child, they're not talking about Skyrim. When people say "horse armour" they're talking about one thing:
In the year of our lord 2006, when Skyrim was still half a decade away. the Xbox 360 release of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion had a $2.50 "DLC" for two sets of horse armour, and it was roundly mocked for it. It wasn't the first microtransaction, but it was certainly the first one that set everyone talking about its absurdity. The conversation was absolutely about charging money for cosmetics. In fact the general tone was, perhaps ironically, the opposite of today's prevailing zeitgeist; this was a time when people were accustomed to spending $10-20 for a sizable "expansion pack" or "content disc", and the idea of dropping $2.50 for horse armour that didn't even do anything was absolutely ludicrous.
While it is possible that a company like Capcom, driven to increase its profit margin, and having normalized pay-to-win-through-convenience-features in this game would choose to not do more pay-to-win options with deeper gameplay impacts in a future game.
Being vocal about hating this game's micro-transactions, especially with the reviews going so negative, is one of the only ways we can communicate that we don't want either.
In order for an argument to be a slippery slope argument it needs to require that step one leads to step two.
My argument wasn't even a slippery slope argument and is therefore not the slippery slope fallacy.
My claim was that normalizing this type of pay-to-win-light game design makes it easier for them to normalize pay-to-win-full game design. It did not claim that normalizing this will lead to normalizing that.
I don't want either in my games.
If we push back against this now it should make them think twice about considering full pay-to-win single player non-free games, because it could have a much bigger backlash. Which is what I was saying.
imo, even cosmetic micro-transaction stuff is disgusting. In single player its absolutely intolerable and in multiplayer its at the edge. Not only it makes creating almost non-existent content more profitable, likely at the expense of worthwhile content because any development costs money. Why make the game better when you can create more cosmetics. I'm not saying creating cosmetics is trivial, but making new skin vs creating actually new content are on completely different scales, especially when those new skins are sometimes just recolouring old ones.
Not having access to cosmetic stuff without paying extra also often detracts from the game for me. As example, in game v-rising there are some cosmetics packs for different skins for your castle's furniture. While you can furnish the place decently with stuff you get, you can be much more creative if you have access to the alternative skins.
If they were all part of some larger expansion pack with something more than just skins, I could accept it but if i have to buy every theme pack separately, I'm not going to do that. I would have much less money available if i had to buy every damn dlc to every game I play. I'd say building and decorating your castle is 50% of the game, less if you don't care about how your castle looks at all. Not buying these dlc make the game less enjoyable for me.
I just finished the "normal" ending a few hours ago. I fast travelled like, 4-5 times? placed down two portcrystals, never used?
I admittedly kinda sped through just to get an idea of the game, and plan to restart hopefully after a PC upgrade and some performance patches, but fast travel really is just not something you really need. The main quest is pretty clever about providing easy ways to keep you moving along, and most quests are pretty localized into an area.
I think the biggest misconception is that there is some mtx shop where you can buy game items. The steam store page for the game has some items in the dlc section that were available in the deluxe edition. 5 wakestones, 1 port stone, etc. It isn’t an unlimited amount to purchase. It’s essentially “did you decide not to buy the deluxe edition but regret it now for some reason? well here are the items included in the deluxe edition that you didn’t get.” There’s no buy all the fast travel i want scenario. It’s maddening to keep seeing this line because it’s clear to anyone who’s actually played the game.
if we just comply and accept all this shit, next step will be ramping up the things that make people want to buy these stupid microtransactions. In context of dragons dogma examples could be making rift crystal gain so awful you have to grind for them, making class changes cost rift crystals, making more items that you can only get with real money.
And most of all, this is SINGLE PLAYER, if someone isnt disgusted by these kinds of microtransactions in this game on principle, I dont even know anymore what to say.
But as silverlining for all this shit, at least greedy executives will see making games more challenging as profitable thing to do. Though unfortunately it will likely also mean challenge will come from having to do a lot of unfun stuff to get anywhere vs pay money so you dont have to because people who make these decisions only care about money and people will give it to them and defend them for it no matter what.