The Microtransactor!

[Scorpid]

Thanks for the comic, has been some weeks since I liked one of your works.

I don't know why alot of you guys don't like their strips. It's pretty consistently funny without stealing their jokes from other video game related comic strips.

 

[Biodeamon]

Oh god please please please no

 

[nexus]

I'm in the same boat. Dead Space 2 was one of my favorite games this gen as well.. I mean it's right up there, top 3.. maybe the top. Dead Space 3 doesn't seem to know what it wants to be at times. The game definitely needed to be more difficult.. floating through the junkyard untethered isn't that exciting, but it could have been e.g. It seems like every time I run into something new or fresh I think, "This would have been incredible if the game had been made as tense as the last ones."

When I first heard they were doing "universal ammo", I thought okay so that means they'll be cutting back on item scavenging? Completely the opposite, you scavenge twice as much as you did before. It's really confusing too, because I don't know the rates that certain weapons consume ammo. So it's just a matter of having a ton of ammo to make sure you're covered, and even on "Impossible" difficulty it's stupid easy to be overstocked on everything. It basically amounts to -- "Do I have at least 20 clips? Okay, good to go." Kind of stupid in a game that adds a bunch of "resources", they should have kept the old ammo system.

Disappointed to hear Classic Mode is really just "missing some features mode". The other mode where you can't die once... I used to do that with old survival horror games like Resident Evil or Silent Hill because my Playstation was broken and unable to save games. Then again those games were not 20 hours long and didn't have a bunch of cheap deaths & swarming enemies around every corner.

 

[veloper]

This comic is improving. I liked this one even more than the Mariokart with Stalin and Hitler joke and that was pretty funny.

 

[Starke]

Should I be laughing or crying? That is spooky, I didn't even know about this speech on microtransactions.

It's quite the speech. You kinda have to admire that level of shamelessly audacious evil.

I especially liked the evil background music from Star Wars in it XD. Evil it is, when did he say this, was it quite recent?

Off the top of my head, I think those comments were in 2011. I know the general spirit of charging for reloads, made it's way into Mass Effect 3's multiplayer.

 

[Paradoxrifts]

The micro-transactions will go away, but only if nobody or next to nobody uses them.

 

[Olas]

The micro-transactions will go away, but only if nobody or next to nobody uses them.

Very true, methinks a boycott is in order.

 

[phantom5582]

WHY is this such a ridiculous issue for people. Hell, I praised the microtransactions in Dead Space 3 because it's so innocuous that you can completely ignore it. Don't want to spend time searching for parts? (Which to me partly defeats the purpose of Dead Space) Then just spend a buck and get a bunch of items. Simple as that. Feel like playing the damn game and earning your reward? Then don't use microtransactions.

Maybe. But perhaps in the next game, because people still bought it, EA or their stockholders will take that as a sign that microtransactions are a good thing. And then in Dead Space 4, you won't be able to get anything but the most basic guns without shelling out a little extra.

"Don't like, don't use" is not really a valid counter to a change that people don't like - especially if it's likely to become more prominent in the next game.

I have an idea, how about crossing that bridge when we get to it?

My god, just because micro transactions mayy be successful in this game, that doesn't mean they will be thrown in willy nilly into freaking everything.

I mean, these transactions are for lazy people who don't want to work their ass off finding parts. That doesn't mean they will be used next to block core features.

Also keep in mind that because you can work for those weapon part and resource packs in game, you know people are going to find a way to game the system to get unlimited Ration Seals to get unlimited packs. And you know that EA has a way to track how many people are buying the resource packs with Microsoft Points and how many are using the Ration Seals. If no one buys those packs with real money, they will know and the stockholders are not going to be able to demand such a bad idea as lined out by leet_x1337.

Personally I didn't mind the Suit and Weapon DLC packs as well as the scavenger bot upgrades. The Survival Pack gets you the three Suit/Weapon packs and the Bot upgrade that makes them faster. Add on the other bot upgrade that gets you twice the resources(even ration seals) and you have gotten all of the DLC you would ever need, assuming you got the game new.

The other suit DLCs in the past games were semi alright as you can get a nice suit that did something special for your playthough. In Deadspace 3, the suits do nothing other then look good. There is one point that you kind of have to change/repair the suit you are in, but that is for story reasons I will not spoil here.

When I first heard they were doing "universal ammo", I thought okay so that means they'll be cutting back on item scavenging? Completely the opposite, you scavenge twice as much as you did before. It's really confusing too, because I don't know the rates that certain weapons consume ammo. So it's just a matter of having a ton of ammo to make sure you're covered, and even on "Impossible" difficulty it's stupid easy to be overstocked on everything. It basically amounts to -- "Do I have at least 20 clips? Okay, good to go." Kind of stupid in a game that adds a bunch of "resources", they should have kept the old ammo system.

Given that you can have a gun that can fire two different "ammo" types on one gun, it would be really hard to have any sort of space for ammo in your inventory. And seeing how the tip changes the weapon type, I see it being even less likely that you can even code in the ammo for the different weapons. The universal ammo system was a way to get around bulky coding and adding unneeded complexity to the game.

 

[nexus]

Given that you can have a gun that can fire two different "ammo" types on one gun, it would be really hard to have any sort of space for ammo in your inventory. And seeing how the tip changes the weapon type, I see it being even less likely that you can even code in the ammo for the different weapons. The universal ammo system was a way to get around bulky coding and adding unneeded complexity to the game.

That's the point I was trying to make. If the argument was that the game was too complex with "different ammo types", then the argument is made invalid considering they make the game x3 more complex than it ever was with the unintuitive weapon system and the "weapon tips" etc.

It wouldn't take up too much inventory space, it would be exactly like it was before.. you stock up on ammo for the weapons that you use and disassemble or store the stuff you don't.

The game is made 100% more complex with the new weapon & ammo system, so I don't see the point.

 

[phantom5582]

Stupid laptop lagging and making a double post. Oh well, I can use it for good.

Given that you can have a gun that can fire two different "ammo" types on one gun, it would be really hard to have any sort of space for ammo in your inventory. And seeing how the tip changes the weapon type, I see it being even less likely that you can even code in the ammo for the different weapons. The universal ammo system was a way to get around bulky coding and adding unneeded complexity to the game.

That's the point I was trying to make. If the argument was that the game was too complex with "different ammo types", then the argument is made invalid considering they make the game x3 more complex than it ever was with the unintuitive weapon system and the "weapon tips" etc.

It wouldn't take up too much inventory space, it would be exactly like it was before.. you stock up on ammo for the weapons that you use and disassemble or store the stuff you don't.

The game is made 100% more complex with the new weapon & ammo system, so I don't see the point.

I felt the weapon system worked out really well and that one can get lost in playing with the new toys over playing the game itself. When the demo came out, I found myself playing in the Weapon crafting room more then I was playing the demo it self because I loved how you can have all sorts of weapon combos and trying to see what will and won't work. Calling the weapon system unintuitive is a bit much given how you are walked though each step and told what each core and tip will do and turn the weapon into.

 

[nexus]

I felt the weapon system worked out really well and that one can get lost in playing with the new toys over playing the game itself. When the demo came out, I found myself playing in the Weapon crafting room more then I was playing the demo it self because I loved how you can have all sorts of weapon combos and trying to see what will and won't work. Calling the weapon system unintuitive is a bit much given how you are walked though each step and told what each core and tip will do and turn the weapon into.

I think the weapon system is alright, but I wouldn't call it intuitive. Sure, they show you how to go through the steps, but that is all. There is a lot of guessing work. It's not that complex, but it is definitely more complex than the previous systems in regards to ammo consumption.

My problem isn't the weapon system though, it is the ammo system. I do not like universal ammo, and I especially do not like it in a game like Dead Space where you can craft anything you want. Meaning inventory management is not an alien concept to how the game operates.


Which is more complex;

- I have 4 weapon types, and I don't know how much ammo each one consumes per shot, but I'll make sure to craft more ammo than I really need.. wasting my resources.

or

- I need Plasma clips, some Javelins and maybe some explosives. Craft what I need and I am good to go.

 

[phantom5582]

I think the weapon system is alright, but I wouldn't call it intuitive. Sure, they show you how to go through the steps, but that is all. There is a lot of guessing work. It's not that complex, but it is definitely more complex than the previous systems in regards to ammo consumption.

My problem isn't the weapon system though, it is the ammo system. I do not like universal ammo, and I especially do not like it in a game like Dead Space where you can craft anything you want. Meaning inventory management is not an alien concept to how the game operates.


Which is more complex;

- I have 4 weapon types, and I don't know how much ammo each one consumes per shot, but I'll make sure to craft more ammo than I really need.. wasting my resources.

or

- I need Plasma clips, some Javelins and maybe some explosives. Craft what I need and I am good to go.

I can see where you are coming from. The closest you can get to seeing how much ammo is used by a gun is pressing left and right to change weapons and looking at the numbers that is above and below each weapon. Why that can't be seen in the inventory menu is beyond me. The ammo crafting as you want it would be better if the weapons were more define and not as fluid as it is now, like in Classic mode. Heck if you really want to go head first into classic mode, why not replace the chips with nodes. Which is another thing I can understand dropping in Deadspace 3.

 

[dashiz94]

WHY is this such a ridiculous issue for people. Hell, I praised the microtransactions in Dead Space 3 because it's so innocuous that you can completely ignore it. Don't want to spend time searching for parts? (Which to me partly defeats the purpose of Dead Space) Then just spend a buck and get a bunch of items. Simple as that. Feel like playing the damn game and earning your reward? Then don't use microtransactions.

Maybe. But perhaps in the next game, because people still bought it, EA or their stockholders will take that as a sign that microtransactions are a good thing. And then in Dead Space 4, you won't be able to get anything but the most basic guns without shelling out a little extra.

"Don't like, don't use" is not really a valid counter to a change that people don't like - especially if it's likely to become more prominent in the next game.

Neither is a presumption a good argument either. As much as you, most of the Escapist, or rather, most of the gaming community like to vilify EA, they're not stupid. If you honestly think that ripping off people to the extent that you described is a sound business practice then you're naive. EA has made some faulty business decisions with closing of studios due to mismanagement, but to believe that they will take a system that is already making them a sizeable profit and pushing it to an extreme that will only garner more ill will and lower profits is, once again, naive and absurd.

 

[Grande McCokle]

I have to disagree on this one, I honestly thought this was the worst game I ever played. The only part I liked was the weapon customization. My brother and cousin were so proud of me that I was able to push through to the end that they wrote up and printed me a certificate for my "bravery" and being a symbol of "inspiration" in addition to crafting a purple heart made of wood for my sacrifices. I still have nightmares of playing that game to this very day..