Consider the following. (Destiny)

by slycrel , Thursday, March 31, 2016, 15:06 (3253 days ago) @ MacAddictXIV

This also puts them in a place where they are both trying to be "fair" to everyone as well as making money. At some point I suspect that "making money" will win out. We're already farther along than I thought -- buying things to speed up your class experience, buying up to lvl 25. Now it's buying armor, which, with light lvl 3 and the new light system, it is essentially the same as selling it at light lvl 280 like the vendors do.

What I'm hearing is that it's like buying from the vendors...

So you're saying you don't see a distinction here. Fair enough.

Which I fully support, by the way, I just don't love it in the form of purchase-ables. They're walking right along the line on this one.

I don't fully agree with eververse either. But I also don't think it affects me in any way. Hell, PS Exclusives are more perverse in my mind than buying emotes. At least I can stay on the XBox and still get what I want for a little change.

It affects everyone. That was cyber's main point and it's part of mine as well. It fundamentally changes the way that the game is developed and designed. We may or may not see this with destiny 2, but all bets are off for development that hasn't started yet. I don't see a big difference between PS4 exclusives and micro-transactions. It's monetizing the experience in the way Bungie feels is best. I just don't happen to agree with it. The fact that there is currently a distinction between the live team and the other team speaks to this being an additional revenue stream, not a vital one. It's very possible that the lines will be blurred here. Which doesn't have to be a bad thing. But would be really easy to make it a bad thing if money becomes the priority over "fun".

If they weren't handing out these packages other than via eververse, people would be pissed. The way they've done it now, they do the CYA thing. And they can encourage purchases with RNG-based silver packages. Even the purchased drops are RNG, which has a dirty feel to it -- it's essentially gambling.

Hate to brake it to you but Destiny is gambling.

Feels like you are arguing with me for argument's sake a bit here. MMO's are largely based on gambling principles. Destiny has one foot in and one foot out of this. Micro-transactions pushes it more in the direction of gambling, less in the direction of more traditional video gaming.

Gaming in general has different categories. Platformers, shooters, adventure games, etc. Gambling, until the last decade or so, hasn't been much a part of "gaming" in the video game sense, other than hardcore MMOs. That's beginning to change. I get the random drop thing, the random engram thing... it's time gating and addictive behavior building. I lost a year of my free time to world of warcraft, in a bad way. I get it. I don't love it in regards to destiny, but I understand why they do it. I think they are trying to be responsible with it. And I think it's still a mixed bag.

Adding real money in there makes it more complex. And also raise the stakes some. micro-transactions can, and I suspect do, take advantage of the addictive/random system they have created. Yes, the player has responsibility not to be stupid. But that doesn't mean that the house running the gambling isn't exploiting the player's basic human nature either.

Also, If they had a "bug" where the drops didn't work right, who is to say that they didn't rig the system to get more money? That's where it gets sticky for me -- they are working the addiction/gambling angle. It's not enough to have your mindshare and time, now they also have to have (more) money along the way.

Okay now. Now you are saying that Bungie is evil and is trying to exploit all of its gamers. Talk about drawing lines. I sir will never proscribe to that.

No, I did not say bungie was evil. I'm saying they are setting themselves up to be in a place where evil would be easy to do. I like Bungie. I like their stuff. I'm nervous about the direction they're headed here.

I'm really curious as to how the gameplay has been fundamentally altered? I see no difference in what you are saying about playing trials. "I need to play to get X" is just "I need to win 9 games without a loss to get to the lighthouse" talk about gated! I totally understand the achievement aspect, but you have to remember that for some people, getting items is the achievement.

I think that's why I like trials so much. The challenge, and success, is the reward. As opposed to the drops at the end. The drops are gravy, as opposed to the end goal, which is the challenge/competition.

I've never been to the lighthouse. At this point we get the 5 win package, sometimes the 7 win package. I play trials because it's -not- about the loot for me. The loot is fun, but like anything in destiny, it's just part of the game. Trials shines because of it's archetype. I was a huge fan of counter-strike back when it was a half-life mod, and played it for many years. It's the same thing. Your actions have direct consequences. The rest of destiny largely has no consequences. PvE -- retry as much as you like. PvP -- kill, respawn, repeat until the timer runs out then do it again.

And to be clear, adding money can definitely add to the experience. Part of the draw of the old arcade games was the addictive behavior -- how long can you make that single quarter last? Without that part of it (i.e. in an emulator or remake on a console) a number of those games lose their luster more quickly. But we're not talking about that sort of monetization here either.

One last analogy... This is like adding paid rides in disneyland. Sure, if they add an extra fee to a few rides maybe they can have more resources to build more stuff. But at the same time, if I've paid for a ticket then do I really need to continue paying to get the full disneyland experience? Doing it either way isn't really right or wrong, but it definitely impacts the experience.

So please, I'd prefer you didn't peg me as a hater, I'm not. And that's not really the point here. I don't love what micro-transactions can, and do, bring to the table in destiny. I'm happy that Bungie at this point is being more or less responsible with them. But a company is inherently amoral, and I'd hate for things to change over time skewing towards profits rather than fun.