Shut up And Take my Silver: Destiny Introduces Microtransactions

[Steven Bogos]

Shut up And Take my Silver: Destiny Introduces Microtransactions

On October 13, Destiny will be getting its very own premium currency: silver, which will be used to purchase emotes.

Most MMOs out there have some kind of Bungie [https://us.battle.net/shop/en/product/game/wow] announced that microtransactions will be added to the game on October 13, in the form of a purchasable premium currency: Silver.

Silver will be purchasable via the Xbox Live or PlayStation Network store, although Bungie did not give any indication of how much real-world money it will cost. It'll be used to buy in-game emotes at the game's new Eververse Trading Company. As with all drugs, the first hit is free, so Bungie will be giving all players a small batch of free Silver so they can get "an emote or two" free-of-charge.

Bungie have stressed that the emotes are purely cosmetic, and "won't impact the action game in any way," so "pay-2-win" concerns can be shelved... at least for now. There will be 18 emotes added with the store's launch, and from the wording it looks like they will have varying costs between them.

Fans may recall a bit of controversy that arose around The Taken King's launch, in that a suite of exclusive emotes were locked behind the special collector's edition wall [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/141315-The-Taken-King-40-Price-Tag-is-Fine-Says-Bungie], forcing early adopters to essentially re-buy the entire game to gain access to them.

Let's just hope that this new store sticks to purely cosmetic items...

Source: Bungie [https://www.bungie.net/en/News/News?aid=13672]



Permalink

 

[martyrdrebel27]

hahahaha oh bungie... you really are a shell of your former selves, aren't you?

regardless of whether or not this is pay to win, it's still microtransactions in a $60 game. (or $120 in Destiny's case). and the point still remains that I can remember a time when stupid shit like this was part of free updates and patches.

you got my day 1 digital deluxe purchase of destiny. and it's gonna take a lot more than a $40 expansion and microtransactions to get my trust back.

 

[Paragon Fury]

NOPENOPENOPE.

Microstransactions are bad, period. Probably the only game that has ever done them right is DotA 2, and they just barely got them right.

Stop with this microstransactions and cosmetic bullshit. I gave you $60+$40 fucking dollars already. I want my costumes, my emotes, my skins, my recolors in the fucking game I paid for, not sold by outside source that I have to pay again for.

Maybe I'm just an old man, but I remember when having a cool color scheme, have cool looking armor, when having a cool looking mount was a sign of skill. Of prestige. Of "look at how much of a badass I am".

Not a sign of "I have ton of disposable income and can waste it on cosmetics in a game I already paid for."

 

[TheRundownRabbit]

Being someone who actually likes Destiny, this news made my stomach turn. Hopefully they'll keep this micro-transaction nonsense only for cosmetic stuff, then I might be all right with it.

EDIT: You know what, I'm NOT alright with it. I'm putting my foot down, this has to end somewhere. Destiny, I stood by you through a lot...but you dropped the f*cking ball on this one.

 

[Chronologist]

You know, these emotes could have been free. They could have been a nice gesture to their customers for their continued support of the game, a token of their appreciation for sticking with them through thick and thin. Instead, they decided to charge people for them. Regardless of the prices of Destiny and its expansions, this was an excellent opportunity to build good-will, and it was completely wasted. I mean, the cost of creating these animations would be negligible; programmers and graphic designers do things like that for fun in between the 'serious' work for expansions and bug fixing. It's not like it cost Bungie 20 grand and they desperately need to recoup the costs somehow.

You know what would have been an awesome feature to put into the game? Letting players who bought the game pre-August 15th 2015 to keep the audiofiles for Peter Dinklage, and to let them choose to play those audiofiles on all missions where they triggered. From what I understand that would cost Bungie literally nothing and appease a moderate portion of their fans who prefer the original audio files. Players who have been making alts since release will now have to replay those early missions with a jarring new voice actor, one they may not enjoy as much as the original.

Destiny is not a bad game, it's a solid 8/10. Its core problems aren't its threadbare story or its repetitiveness, it's the way the game is marketed and how the executives perceive player entitlement and relations. I love Halo, and the only reason I didn't jump on the Destiny bandwagon was because I saw their pricing scheme and their looting system and decided against supporting such toxic practices.

 

[major_chaos]

Uhg, why Bungie? I'm not overly mad about this, not like I use emotes ever anyway, but I'm not happy about it either, and there is no way in hell the tiny amount of money this will bring in is worth the PR hit.

EDIT: According to some people Bungie is planning to ramp up a microtransaction model as a replacement for paid DLC, the idea being that TTK is the last big paid expansion and instead we will get a trickle of free content funded by microtransactions until Destiny 2 drops sometime late 2016. I'm actually more OK with the little cosmetics if it means free updates, but only time will tell if it works out that way.

 

[martyrdrebel27]

I guess we'll finally get to test the theory that we'll be "throwing money at our screen" for these emotes hahaha.

 

[bat32391]

Wow, right when I thought it could get worse they decide to add microtransactions to this shitshow. Good job Bungie.

 

[SlumlordThanatos]

I never understood the blind, irrational hate for microtransations. Provided they're purely cosmetic...and provided they're not overpriced, I see no reason to oppose adding little things to the game and charging a tiny amount for them. If you have to keep the coders busy fixing bugs, it would also help to keep the designers, artists, and animators busy, and little things like these would help to generate some additional income to pay the bills without charging a subscription fee.

World of Warcraft, for example, charged $10 for vanity pets and $25 for mounts...in a game you had to pay for AND pay a subscription to use. That pricing was (and still is) ridiculous, and is the primary reason I never bought anything from the Battle.net store.

CS:GO kinda zig-zags this. Gun skins can range from the very cheap (less than $0.10) to ridiculously expensive ($300+). If they're cool enough, I wouldn't mind dropping a buck or two to support a game I like in exchange for something neat, with the all-important caveat that the item I'm buying is cosmetic only. $300 is a bit much, though. However, it does help that CS:GO is considerably cheaper than buying every WoW expansion, plus no subscription, so it has that going for it.

I'm not sure what Destiny is going to have for sale, or for how much, but there's no need to jump on the hatred bandwagon just yet. Wait and see until we get more details.

 

[Sarge034]

How bout you deliver on your initial marketing for Destiny first Bungie? Then AND ONLY THEN should you even consider selling shit for irl cash.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

Ah, hell. Here we go again.

You know what would have been an awesome feature to put into the game? Letting players who bought the game pre-August 15th 2015 to keep the audiofiles for Peter Dinklage, and to let them choose to play those audiofiles on all missions where they triggered. From what I understand that would cost Bungie literally nothing and appease a moderate portion of their fans who prefer the original audio files. Players who have been making alts since release will now have to replay those early missions with a jarring new voice actor, one they may not enjoy as much as the original.

That could have been a nice feature for fans of the Dinklage voice-overs. Though, there is probably some royalty clause in his contract preventing them from doing that without someone footing the bill. (So, it would probably cost the customers extra, and you know how well that would go down in the news.) Also, I guess the redundant high definition audio files would take up a lot of space.

Uhg, why Bungie? I'm not overly mad about this, not like I use emotes ever anyway, but I'm not happy about it either, and there is no way in hell the tiny amount of money this will bring in is worth the PR hit.

EDIT: According to some people Bungie is planning to ramp up a microtransaction model as a replacement for paid DLC, the idea being that TTK is the last big paid expansion and instead we will get a trickle of free content funded by microtransactions until Destiny 2 drops sometime late 2016. I'm actually more OK with the little cosmetics if it means free updates, but only time will tell if it works out that way.

It is working for games like Team Fortress 2 and League of Legends. The only problem here is we're dealing with Activision. If I was a Destiny player and they did try that strategy, I would have at least a little fear of an idiot Activision exec with more greed then brains turning it into a pay to win fustercluck. There's already been a fair amount of stupid PR decisions behind this game already.

 

[Buckets]

I liked the taken king, it finished off (to a degree) the original story and there are still some bits to do. Personally I don't give a shit about the emote thing and will not waste money on them. If they give a couple of freebies, so be it. As long as they don't sell exotic stuff for real money, I don't mind.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

Is this really a big deal at all in the grand scheme of things? Nope.

Is it still an annoyance? Yep.

Do the offered emotes justify any price at all? Nope.

 

[Kenjitsuka]

Maybe I'm just an old man, but I remember when having a cool color scheme, have cool looking armor, when having a cool looking mount was a sign of skill. Of prestige. Of "look at how much of a badass I am".

Not a sign of "I have ton of disposable income and can waste it on cosmetics in a game I already paid for."

All of that, exactly!!! :'(

Also, OP: "Let's just hope that this new store sticks to purely cosmetic items..."
Yeah.... there's NO WAY they wont be putting the fastest mounts, übercool unique mounts and anything else that is amazing on there! Just look at Rift. And btw; Rift is actually a PRETTY great F2P game now, which doesn't force you to grab your wallet every milisecond. If you want a HORRIBLE example; the first few months of Neverwinter (that D&D MMORPG). I hate those moneygrabbers so much!!! EVERYTHING from like 80% on was basically money-gated up the BUTT!!! Paywall after Paywall from Hell!

 

[bliebblob]

Spoiler: My reaction

And to think, after the reasonable reviews of the taken king, I was actually starting to warm up to it again! XD

I'm sorry, I mean no disrespect. If you're having fun with it, great. More power to ya. But after the loot cave, the scumbag cryptarch meme, the joke that the crucible apparently is, the red bull deal, the expansion pricing debacle, and now this, it's just... At some point there's just nothing left to do but either cry, or laugh. I'm glad it was laughter this time.

 

[Quellist]

NOPENOPENOPE.

Microstransactions are bad, period. Probably the only game that has ever done them right is DotA 2, and they just barely got them right.

Stop with this microstransactions and cosmetic bullshit. I gave you $60+$40 fucking dollars already. I want my costumes, my emotes, my skins, my recolors in the fucking game I paid for, not sold by outside source that I have to pay again for.

Maybe I'm just an old man, but I remember when having a cool color scheme, have cool looking armor, when having a cool looking mount was a sign of skill. Of prestige. Of "look at how much of a badass I am".

Not a sign of "I have ton of disposable income and can waste it on cosmetics in a game I already paid for."

Totally agree. Tales series has done the same thing. Used to have loads of weird and wonderful 'Costume Quests' now its all DLC bundles for a premium price

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Well I was never sold on the game since the beta, but still...damn, activision. At least try to maintain some illusion of respect for your customers. Ehh, who am I kidding. They probably only see their customer base as spoilt children, ready to be conditioned for consumerism.

 

[ddrkreature]

From my many hours of playing Destiny since taken king has been out, I have seen literally no one actually use the extra emotes. They're like hats in tf2. Utterly pointless fun things. Is it dumb we have to pay for them? Yes, but more likely than not, I and many other people will forget they exist at all

 

[Thyunda]

It is working for games like Team Fortress 2 and League of Legends. The only problem here is we're dealing with Activision. If I was a Destiny player and they did try that strategy, I would have at least a little fear of an idiot Activision exec with more greed then brains turning it into a pay to win fustercluck. There's already been a fair amount of stupid PR decisions behind this game already.

What do Team Fortress 2 and League of Legends have in common?

I'll give you a hint. It's the polar opposite to "charging offensive amounts of money for content we know damn well isn't worth the bother."

By which I mean they're free to play, because my hint became an aggressive statement. Destiny's apparently determined to tick all the boxes on the dickery checklist. Overpriced DLC, a half-arsed vanilla game, pandering to new players at the expense of the old (that collector's edition crap), and now it's microtransactions. Is there anything Destiny could do to be even worse? I'm running out of excuses for Bungie and that's hurtful.

 

[Riotguards]

So this is what they meant by throwing money at your screens when you see the new dance emotes

it all makes sense!