MGSV's microtransaction scandal++

[Cid Silverwing]

SPOILERS! Avert your eyes etc etc.

I was told by a friend that MGSV's multiplayer FOB scumbaggery is going to be even more scumbaggy.

http://www.konami.jp/mgs5/tpp/en/news/day30.php5

I direct your attention to the following paragraph:

FOB insurance service begins!

Your FOBs are always at risk of coming under attack. Now, you can rest easy with FOB insurance (paid service). If you sign up for insurance, then during the insurance period you will be compensated for any materials and staff lost due to rival infiltrations.
* Staff/materials stolen by the rival will in fact remain on your base, and an identical amount of staff/materials will be handed over to the rival instead.
* MB Coins are purchased with real money, but free MB Coins are also distributed periodically as login bonuses, etc.
* The following are not covered by FOB insurance:
・Staff/items that are not fully your property, such as abducted staff being held in your Brig (FOB)
・Wounded staff (staff lost due to death or extraction will be compensated)
・Staff used by you to deploy in defense of the FOB (neither death nor extraction will be compensated)
・Nuclear weapons

As if the audible clunk of Chapter 2 wasn't horrible enough. For context, the "Truth" ending left an incredibly sour taste in my mouth and inflicted actual mental phantom pain upon me. It was with a lot of deliberation that I made the decision to delete my 53% completed data and uninstall this unworthy garbage. I didn't get gifted this game by another friend only to be told I was playing as a pretender to Big Boss and not Big Boss himself (MGS2 comes to mind), but then again I despise this characterization of the actual Big Boss now. He's been turned into a straight-up villain, no different from any of the other villains of MGS before him.

While I was typing this out, I was also linked this article.

http://www.destructoid.com/konami-files-trademark-for-big-boss-pachinko-machine-313977.phtml

No surprise there. #fuckonami, and now #fuckojima too. I grew up on this franchise ever since MGS back in 1998, and now look where it's gone. I just don't care about this series anymore, but I digress.

What are your thoughts on this continued pay-2-win scam stinking up the industry with its cancerous greed?

 

[Skops]

I haven't paid any attention to the FOB stuff. I invaded one persons FOB, snuck around for about 30 seconds and realized there was no one there, and there was nothing to steal. Until I heard of the secret 'no nukes ending' I don't see a point in the mode outside of making your staff numbers bigger.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Wow. I don't even...WOW!

Someone invaded me once and it sucked. So I deleted my save games and I started a new game. Then I cheated my way to resources and I just ignored FOB's entirely. Konami got enough of my money.

 

[Mutant1988]

Relevant:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racket_%28crime%29

"A racket is a service that is fraudulently offered to solve a problem, such as for a problem that does not actually exist, that will not be put into effect, or that would not otherwise exist if the racket did not exist."

 

[Zetatrain]

Yeah found out about this earlier. To be honest though I don't really care about any of Konami's FOB bullshit at this point.

Luckily, I've set up my firewall to block out attempts to connect with the MGSV servers so I don't have to deal with FOB shit and I'm having plenty of fun without it. Still its quite a shame a lot of resources got put into this. I might have actually enjoyed it if Konami didn't force it on the player 24/7 or if it didn't cripple your base building progress with one invasion.

 

[EternallyBored]

Yeah found out about this earlier. To be honest though I don't really care about any of Konami's FOB bullshit at this point.

Luckily, I've set up my firewall to block out attempts to connect with the MGSV servers so I don't have to deal with FOB shit and I'm having plenty of fun without it. Still its quite a shame a lot of resources got put into this. I might have actually enjoyed it if Konami didn't force it on the player 24/7 or if it didn't cripple your base building progress with one invasion.

Where did you get the idea that it cripples your base building process? I've been invaded plenty of times, even if you ignore the fact that the invader often fails which gets you rewards for doing nothing, you can only lose what's on the FOB itself. if you never really upgrade security you end up with the base providing few resources, but you never really lose any resources either so the FOB just opens up extra staff slots. If the invader wins and takes some of your troops they can only take troops that are stationed in extra slots provided by the FOB so you never lose more than what the FOB gives you, the game does not explain this well so it's easy to think that you are losing actual mother base personnel and resources.

If you aren't interested in the FOB stuff just station all your worst troops on the security team and don't put them on high alert that way you don't pay out much of anything to defend your base, most people won't invade a shitty FOB cause there's no reward in it, and even if you do get invaded you'll never lose more than what the base already gave you, so it's just a cheaper way of upgrading your team capacity which high heroism will give you more than you lose and usually with better stats. If you direct contract your s rank guys you don't lose them either.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

*snippity snap*

I should point out you don't just lose shit from your FOB. You ACTUALLY lose staff and materials from Mother Base itself.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/718564-metal-gear-solid-v-the-phantom-pain/72457195

 

[EternallyBored]

*snippity snap*

I should point out you don't just lose shit from your FOB. You ACTUALLY lose staff and materials from Mother Base itself.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/718564-metal-gear-solid-v-the-phantom-pain/72457195

Nope, the game doesn't explain this well, but you can lose troops only to the limit the FOB provides. For example, if your R&D team is at 150 capacity with just Mother Base, and your FOB increases that limit by 50, those extra 50 are stationed on the FOB, those are the troops you lose if a player successfully invades your base.

So yes, you can level down by losing men, but you'll never lose more than what the FOB gave you, so you are still coming out ahead even if you lose %90 of everyone stationed in the FOB, which should be almost impossible as the rate you gain soldiers, even volunteers should be outstripping your losses. I haven't played for the last 5 days, and I'm still sitting at 500+ people in my reserves just waiting to fill empty slots. If you have soldiers like rank S++ and don't want to lose them, then put them on direct contract and the game will not let them get stolen from invasions, that doesn't work with security teams though as they are always on the FOB.

Same with resources, you don't lose resources from MB, you lose the ones stored on the FOB which are the resources provided by the FOB, once they are processed at MB you can't lose them, although MB has a resource cap so if you let resources accumulate you'll start seeing a buildup of unprocessed resources. I've been invaded a lot after participating in the FOBs, I've never had resources taken away that were already stored in MB. You can lose a lot of GMP if you aren't careful, every time your security team deploys to defend it costs GMP depending on their alert, number, and equipment level, if you never bother setting your security up then it costs basically nothing. I've lost all my resources on my FOB due to retaliations, yet my processed resources on MB never dropped once, still sitting at the 100-150K mark in everything right now.

Also there's a cooldown timer so you can't constantly be invaded every second of the day when you aren't playing, at some point you basically become invisible to invasion after enough successful invasions against you and if you don't invade anyone else.

Now, apparently, from what I've heard, haven't had the chance to play the last couple days, the latest patch changes the way fultoned vehicles and turrets are stored. Letting you store only a couple on MB then putting the rest on the FOB. That is some straight up bullshit as it nukes the ability to sell off your spare vehicles, and it just makes them useless fodder for getting stolen, it apparently doesn't affect deployment from what I've heard, since if you deploy a vehicle then destroy it, it takes on of the spares from the FOB and puts it back in your MB pool, still seems like an overall shitty change to encourage people to buy insurance.

Finally, this all applies to the console releases, from what I've heard, cheating is rampant on the PC version, you still won't lose more than the FOB gives you (except maybe vehicles and turrets now), but the FOB system is exploitable on PC. From what I've heard from friends with the PC version, the hackers are around, but you can still manage an FOB just fine as invasions are honestly pretty rare if you don't upgrade the FOBs capacity or do invasions yourself, most people won't waste time invading an FOB with very little resources or staff on it.

 

[SmugFrog]

Besides huge spoilers you just put without warning and generally being over dramatic, there's nothing new...

Regardless, announce spoilers.

Yes please! Geez, some of us are still working on the game.

 

[Strazdas]

so if i am reading this correctly (and please tell me i am not) another person from a multiplayer portion can somehow invade my base and affect my singleplayer progress?

 

[Cid Silverwing]

so if i am reading this correctly (and please tell me i am not) another person from a multiplayer portion can somehow invade my base and affect my singleplayer progress?

Yes, and let no one tell you otherwise. This multiplayer scam is being forced upon and interfering with our singleplayer experience. Once you build that FOB, there's no way to disconnect or block it unless you restart your save.

 

[Strazdas]

so if i am reading this correctly (and please tell me i am not) another person from a multiplayer portion can somehow invade my base and affect my singleplayer progress?

Yes, and let no one tell you otherwise. This multiplayer scam is being forced upon and interfering with our singleplayer experience. Once you build that FOB, there's no way to disconnect or block it unless you restart your save.

yep, i guess i know which game is going to be denied any access to internet so it cannot change my saves, then.

 

[Zenn3k]

SPOILERS! Avert your eyes etc etc.

I was told by a friend that MGSV's multiplayer FOB scumbaggery is going to be even more scumbaggy.

http://www.konami.jp/mgs5/tpp/en/news/day30.php5

I direct your attention to the following paragraph:

FOB insurance service begins!

Your FOBs are always at risk of coming under attack. Now, you can rest easy with FOB insurance (paid service). If you sign up for insurance, then during the insurance period you will be compensated for any materials and staff lost due to rival infiltrations.
* Staff/materials stolen by the rival will in fact remain on your base, and an identical amount of staff/materials will be handed over to the rival instead.
* MB Coins are purchased with real money, but free MB Coins are also distributed periodically as login bonuses, etc.
* The following are not covered by FOB insurance:
・Staff/items that are not fully your property, such as abducted staff being held in your Brig (FOB)
・Wounded staff (staff lost due to death or extraction will be compensated)
・Staff used by you to deploy in defense of the FOB (neither death nor extraction will be compensated)
・Nuclear weapons

As if the audible clunk of Chapter 2 wasn't horrible enough. For context, the "Truth" ending left an incredibly sour taste in my mouth and inflicted actual mental phantom pain upon me. It was with a lot of deliberation that I made the decision to delete my 53% completed data and uninstall this unworthy garbage. I didn't get gifted this game by another friend only to be told I was playing as a pretender to Big Boss and not Big Boss himself (MGS2 comes to mind), but then again I despise this characterization of the actual Big Boss now. He's been turned into a straight-up villain, no different from any of the other villains of MGS before him.

While I was typing this out, I was also linked this article.

http://www.destructoid.com/konami-files-trademark-for-big-boss-pachinko-machine-313977.phtml

No surprise there. #fuckonami, and now #fuckojima too. I grew up on this franchise ever since MGS back in 1998, and now look where it's gone. I just don't care about this series anymore, but I digress.

What are your thoughts on this continued pay-2-win scam stinking up the industry with its cancerous greed?

If I had such a horrible grasp on what the ending of the game was, I could see how it would leave a sour note. However, those of us who DO know the plot of the other games, the ending was pretty awesome.

Get over the "we were just a pretender" stuff, no, you weren't, you are Big Boss. There are TWO Big Bosses. The Big Boss villain from Metal Gear and the Big Boss villain from Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. MGS V explains why there are two of them.

 

[Zenn3k]

Still spoilers:

If I had such a horrible grasp on what the ending of the game was, I could see how it would leave a sour note. However, those of us who DO know the plot of the other games, the ending was pretty awesome.

Get over the "we were just a pretender" stuff, no, you weren't, you are Big Boss. There are TWO Big Bosses. The Big Boss villain from Metal Gear and the Big Boss villain from Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. MGS V explains why there are two of them.

I thought the idea was that the true Big Boss was the guy who appeared in the end of 4 (not the horrifying pudding), no?

I actually liked the twist, I had my doubts throughout the game but didn't think they have the balls to go with it. In the end Big Boss is became an idea and symbol, more than a single man.

Well yeah, eventually. And thats the same Big Boss you play in Ground Zeros. The Big Boss you play in MGS V is "Phantom Big Boss", and the "bad guy" of Metal Gear (1). The Big Boss at the end of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, is the REAL Big Boss who is burned badly and kept alive to return in MGS 4.

 

[pookie101]

its a stupid idea and with this insurance crap we see why it was introduced in the first place. to nickle and dime players, even the ones who would prefer to just ignore the crap and play single player

that said i just built the one they make you build and just ignored it after that and once i unlocked quiets actual clothes i was happy although chapter 2 is basically pointless for someone who is not invested in the series

 

[Sonicron]

... Is there a 'play offline' option in the start menu, like in (e.g.) Bloodborne, so I can avoid this bullshit? Or is the only way to stop the game from connecting to the servers to disconnect my console from the internet?

Regardless, this sounds skeezy as fuck.

 

[elvor0]

but then again I despise this characterization of the actual Big Boss now. He's been turned into a straight-up villain, no different from any of the other villains of MGS before him.

I...didn't really get that vibe at all, if anything I felt that he did nothing villainous at all in MGS5. What did he do that was so evil?

Besides, with Big Boss he's actually /from/ a straight up villain (MG1+MG2) into a tragic anti-hero or anti villain depending on your view. I personally never really felt that any of the villains in MGS were straight up villains aside from Volgin and Liquid Snake. Yeah okay, a lot of them did questionable things, but characters such as The Senator, Ocelot, Solidus, they were all doing their things in attempt to wrest control away from Zero and the War Economy, who himself also wanted to make the world a better place, none of them went about it exactly the right way, but none of them were evil.

 

[TilMorrow]

Although the insurance service is more than a bit of bullshit, I really don't get the hate with the FOB system as it's not really anything new. If you ever played The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot you'd know that that was a bigger shit show than MGSV's FOBs as extremely overleveled and pay2win players had free reign of your keep and would make you go broke. Additionally it was a massive pain the ass to recoup all your gold that you lost from spam running the same PvE keeps over and over only to have it stolen moments later by a player who one shots your threats and keep bosses. At least the FOB system lets you keep resources and protects you for a long time.