EA: Consumers 'enjoying and embracing' microtransactions

[Trivun]

People complaining about microtransactions, oh boo hoo. Microtransactions are NOT things like map packs or extra story content or whatever. Microtransactions are things like armour or skin changes (that have no effect on gameplay whatsoever) and other tiny things like that. Nobody is forcing you to spend money on them. The only time microtransactions are a bad thing are when they actively prevent you from getting something that has an effect on gameplay or locks you out of certain levels or whatever. Otherwise there is nothing wrong with the practice.

At the end of the day microtransactions are the only thing keeping a lot of F2P games afloat, and nobody has a problem with that. But as soon as a 'larger' company like EA do it, somehow they're doing the devil's work. Yet if the company didn't use every opportunity it could to actually make money then a lot of decent people would suddenly be out of work when the company inevitably goes under. There are plenty of reasons to be mad at EA, especially regarding their ways of making money at the consumer's expense without providing anything that actually benefits gamers. But microtransactions are not one of those bad things. For once, I'm actually on EA's side here, PROVIDING they aren't blocking actual gameplay content. I mean, who the hell gives a damn about making their character look pretty, when the gameplay itself is so much more important and relevant? I bought the Halo 4 Limited Edition and I couldn't give a rat's arse about the armour upgrades, because they DON'T AFFECT GAMEPLAY. And let's not forget the whole Oblivion Horse Armour debacle...

 

[TheBelgianGuy]

People complaining about microtransactions, oh boo hoo. Microtransactions are NOT things like map packs or extra story content or whatever. Microtransactions are things like armour or skin changes (that have no effect on gameplay whatsoever) and other tiny things like that. Nobody is forcing you to spend money on them. The only time microtransactions are a bad thing are when they actively prevent you from getting something that has an effect on gameplay or locks you out of certain levels or whatever. Otherwise there is nothing wrong with the practice.

Don't let facts ruin their blind hipster EA hate train rage, man, they're happy when they got something to rage against.

 

[loa]

words

You're not "the bad guy", you're noise.
You're incredibly naive to think that this won't affect you if you "just choose not to buy it [the microtransactions]".
People are not complaining because of their lack of self control.

 

[Thoric485]

The further they push their moneygrubbing crap the better.

It makes the studios that actually value their creative work and their customers stand out.

 

[Elfgore]

In Battlefield 3, the smaller packs unlock weapons, vehicle upgrades etc and allow you to catch up with say, friends who have been playing for the last year, if you don't want to use the scavenger bots in DS3 (why you wouldn't I dunno, they are cool as shit) then you can just get resources NOW.

This pisses me off.

I worked insanely hard to level up my classes in Battlefield 3, and then some guy spends thirty bucks and has all the same stuff I do? Bullshit! It's the same with Halo 4 "Buy Mountain Dew and Doritos for free level gain." It's unfair for the few it seems nowadays who want to actually work to get better at games not pay money. if it was for singleplayer only that is fine, but as soon as multiplayer gets involved I get pissed.

If your attachments are the only thing that seperate you, who spent the time learning the weapons and unlocking it and mr. Credit Card, you're doing it wrong.

Using another example from BF3, the Vehicle Perk unlocks. Give a noob Air Radar and he's still going to have a hard time avoiding the ground, until he learns it for himself.

Now I will give you the flying perks, those bad boys take awhile to get the hang off. (Refer here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIgABcRYzhw for my first flight experience)

Also how am I doing it wrong for wanting people to work the same time I did for decent weapons and mods? Just curious didn't really understand that.

 

[juyunseen]

When you are given no choice in the matter but want to continue playing competitively, you'll "enjoy" and "embrace" it.

It's something I hate about these micro DLCs or map packs. If you want to continue to play without getting locked out, you need to buy shit. It happens with Call of Duty, it happens with Halo, it happens with Battlefield. I can't stand it.

As a Halo player, I just want to say that noone bothers with the Halo map packs. Most players are content with the default maps, and it's actually harder to find a game on the DLC maps.

DLC maps haven't been widely played since Halo 3.

 

[Tayh]

I think you forgot to mention the difference between the two games.

TF2 is free.

Sims 3 and ME3 cost $49.99 and $89.99 USD respectively.

(prices were pulled from the Origin webstore by a New Zealand IP and were for the standard editions)

THAT is the main difference? Really? REALLY? SERIOUSLY?!
No word of mention to the fact that one is a free fps(like we aren't drowning in those), while the other is a TPS-RPG, features a long singleplayer campaign, is the finale of a trilogy, is released on multiple platforms... Oh, and has a multiplayer part which is also completely free to play once you've bought the main game.

I'm not even going to mention Sims 3 since the "big, bad and evil microtransactions" consist mainly of reskins - which can be obtained for free and completely legal elsewhere.

 

[Vegosiux]

Yaknow, one of the perks of being not-filthy-rich is that you don't spend money on junk...

And microtransactions, well...I think the old saying, "A fool and his money are easily parted" holds, but I can't decide whether the foolishness or the shameless taking advantage of said foolishness ticks me off slightly more than the other.

 

[Aeonknight]

In Battlefield 3, the smaller packs unlock weapons, vehicle upgrades etc and allow you to catch up with say, friends who have been playing for the last year, if you don't want to use the scavenger bots in DS3 (why you wouldn't I dunno, they are cool as shit) then you can just get resources NOW.

This pisses me off.

I worked insanely hard to level up my classes in Battlefield 3, and then some guy spends thirty bucks and has all the same stuff I do? Bullshit! It's the same with Halo 4 "Buy Mountain Dew and Doritos for free level gain." It's unfair for the few it seems nowadays who want to actually work to get better at games not pay money. if it was for singleplayer only that is fine, but as soon as multiplayer gets involved I get pissed.

If your attachments are the only thing that seperate you, who spent the time learning the weapons and unlocking it and mr. Credit Card, you're doing it wrong.

Using another example from BF3, the Vehicle Perk unlocks. Give a noob Air Radar and he's still going to have a hard time avoiding the ground, until he learns it for himself.

Now I will give you the flying perks, those bad boys take awhile to get the hang off. (Refer here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIgABcRYzhw for my first flight experience)

Also how am I doing it wrong for wanting people to work the same time I did for decent weapons and mods? Just curious didn't really understand that.

My point was that because you earned the attachments on the guns, you're familiar with how certain ones mix with specific guns themselves. Example: you generally wouldn't put a Heavy Barrel on a FAMAS and keep it in full auto, otherwise when you go to shoot someone at a distance you're going to be looking at the ceiling after 3 shots (exaggeration of course.) Mr. Credit Card doesn't know this, so even if he bought attachments that you earned, you're still going to be at an advantage. Although if I were to rephrase my prior comment, it would be "if a noob is doing just as well as you right out of the gate, and he only bought attachments, something ain't right."

Much like the Jet attachments, they still have to learn the weapons, the only thing they have going for them is they don't have to grind hours in Team Deathmatch before deciding if they like that gun after it has attachments.

Like the name of the perk suggests, these are shortcuts. The only thing it does is make the game more approachable to newcomers (for a price) in the event they want to get to the meat of the experience that much faster (learning maps, joining platoons, getting used to squad gameplay, vehicle controls, etc.)

 

[squid5580]

Keep in mind, people like us who complain about microtransactions on message boards aren't the average gamer. We're a very passionate and vocal minority.

The average consumer, the ones who don't really care about the industry or how the industry is treating them, probably do embrace microtransactions since it allows them to skip anything they find as tedious and get straight to the stuff they find fun for just a few extra dollars.

Back when I used to play World of WarCraft I knew a guy who paid another person to level up all of his characters, then bought Gold and gear with real-life currency. I asked him why he did it, since I couldn't fathom why you'd buy a game only to pay someone else to play it. He told me it was because he worked long hours and didn't want to deal with all of that stuff he found uninteresting during his limited free time. All he really wanted to do was play PvP, so to him the extra real-life cost was worth it to get straight into PvP.

Not to mention $25 mounts that sell how many millions?

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

Not to mention $25 mounts that sell how many millions?

He did have a sparkle pony, come to think of it.

 

[Rattja]

I find it sad that this is where we are headding, even if it's just cosmetic, it kinda buggs me that it's there.
And not just that, it's everywhere =/

I remember when I first started playing MMOs, I remember people laughing at me, as they could not believe how stupid I was to buy a game, and THEN pay for every month, in fact some still do. The same people don't seem to have much problem with this though.

Anarchy Online and Tibia are two games that comes to mind. They were free to play, but had premium subscriptions that were monthly payments. Yes that's pay to win, but I played and enjoyed both those games (still am) for a long time without feeling the need to upgrade, as basically all the premium stuff was aimed at the higher levels.

I kinda liked the way AO did it, where you got the "normal edge" with better items, new places and all that, more then enough to justify the cost, but also gave you points for every month that you could buy fun vanity items with.
So, if you saw someone with say.. a devil and an angel on their shoulder, you knew that person had been around for at least half a year, and not someone who just had some money to spend.

I'd much rather have a set monthly fee where I have accsess to everything, rather then buy a little here, a litte there, and that, and that and.. where did my money go?

Also, aren't we basically just renting games at this point? With everything being online, DLC and things to buy ingame, once the server or connection is gone, so is everything you just bought.

 

[Maximum Bert]

Thats the one

No it's not, and there never was such a video. Again, it was the CEO talking about the psychology of microtransactions, never did they say they would actually do such a thing.

And I'll repeat: 'Of course that didn't stop people from misinterpreting the video to think "ZOMG EA IS GOING TO CHARGE FOR BULLETS" based on a poor example spoken out loud in a conference call.'

as for what designers want pfft they arent funding the project they will do what they are told

No, because a good combat design team will be able to successfully argue that allowing such 'live cheats' will drive all the players away due to the imbalance, resulting in less profits long term vs. making people buy bullets for the instant payoff short term. Publishers can see reason you know, and not all dev teams are spineless sycophants.

Aside from those free/pay to win Chinese MMOs which I don't have a lot of knowledge on, I can't think of a single competitive multiplayer game that forces you to buy your bullets with real money first, or allows instant reloads in the middle of a round.

Aside from supply drops (or TF2 dispensers), but that's an intentional gameplay mechanic. Not to mention enemies can possibly use them too, or ambush people going for it, so there are disadvantages.

I hope you are right but im still not convinced I guess only time will tell tho eh. Why not say buying bullets dosent allow an imbalance because everybody can buy bullets for instance so the effect is still technically levelled I suppose they could say well yeah but that gives those with more money a greater advantage but they can say that those who have spent more time with the game still have an advantage its just allowing people who cant spend as much time with the game (but have more money) a chance to compete, and in true competetive play such as tournaments they could just set up a house rule like buying bullets is forbidden.

This is all speculation and there is no way EA will do this at least for the forseeable future because of how many people it will piss off but if they can get people to accept micro transactions as a norm then they can keep pushing as that mental barrier of resistance is gone, its no longer a `live cheat` but a way of gaming.

What they need now is a hook for these transactions such as a killer franchise or game they can work with that everybody wants to play and will put up with a lot of shit to do so.