Consider the following. (Destiny)

by MacAddictXIV , Seattle WA, Thursday, March 31, 2016, 16:17 (3253 days ago) @ slycrel

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.

Don't worry. I have tendency to play more of the devil's advocate when I debate. I also don't really peg people :)

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".

In my head, I break it down into two types of development: The long term and the short term. I think micro transactions affect the short term development but not the long term development. Micro transactions themselves might get past that "line" people keep talking about in which case it will affect the long term product because people won't buy it.

But frankly, I'm still not worried that Bungie is going to go over the line with it. Because I know that if they do that there will be such a global outrage.

Hate to brake it to you but Destiny is gambling.

Feels like you are arguing with me for argument's sake a bit here.

Yes and no. As I mentioned before, I like to play the devil's advocate. But I will get to what I mean in a second.

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.

In my mind gambling can be broken down into: You give a system something of value, that system does what it's supposed to do and you hope that you get something out of that system that is worth more than what you put into it. Any game with RNG is gambling. It doesn't take money to make it gambling. I mean, money is just a made up concept for your effort in the world. But I digress, whenever you go on raid you are gambling but putting in effort (value) in hopes that you will beat the boss and get something of greater value (could be fun, items or achievements). What really bugs people is when people gamble with value other than effort. This is because that is what games started with.

I am one of those people. What I'm saying is, there are two ways to gamble with the new update. 1. you can spend virtually no value gambling with free items you get weekly or 2. you can spend money to for the chance at greater value. What value people take in armor pieces that you have to spend other armor to make worth while in the game I have no idea.

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.

Gambling is meant to be fun. I have gambled before, it was fun. Games are meant to be fun. Games have gambling aspects in them. Bungie added more with these micro-transactions. I understand that real money makes it more complex and could entice people with addictive/gambling tendencies, but for those people, they really should be playing Destiny if that is the case. That's true with any addiction.

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.

This is what bugs me. You say that it is wrong for establishments to exploit basic human nature through gambling. I say that it both parties that are doing harm, but ultimately it's the player that is making the final decision. I know we are using casino's as a metaphor to Destiny here, but there is a huge difference. For one, Casino's in my mind are for two purposes, having fun and making money. Simply put, you are having fun by "playing" and the odds are against you to lose money. If you are going to a casino and think that's not true then you are naive. So the odds that you will lose money is your "fun" tax. Then there are people who do it to try and make money, those people should know the risk, of actually making money off of it. If they don't, they are naive as well.

This is the same for Destiny except it's even more forgiving than a casino. I give a raid as an example. There are people who raid just for fun, those people have absolutely no cost to their fun because they are not doing it for the reward. They aren't truely gambling. Then there are people who do raids for the rewards, those people also need to understand that the odds are against them (although less so than a casino).

Now, I know that we all want a better environment that doesn't trigger our "gambling" tendencies. And we have every right to fight for that. But we also can't single mindedly target one aspect of Destiny and say "that's wrong because it makes me want to do things I don't want to do" Destiny is all about risk/reward.

I would talk more about the rest of the topic, but I'm spent :)

Sorry if this is confrontational or in your face. I have a tendency to do that. Just know that I hold no ill-will towards you.