Personal Responsibility. (Destiny)

by squidnh3, Thursday, October 17, 2019, 13:55 (1646 days ago) @ cheapLEY

Those two statements are at odds with each other for me. Making something with the intentions of sparking FOMO to lure people into buying it is inherently predatory. It’s a digital thing, there’s absolutely no reason for it to ever not be on sale, except as a way to get people to rush to buy it before they no longer can.

Here's how I'm thinking about it:

These are luxury goods that cannot be resold. Their only purpose is either to inflate the user's ego by serving as a status symbol, or to appeal to a person's aesthetic sensibilities.

The second one (which you seem to be) is straightforward. Just buy the items if you want them. If you want to wait to see if they will be cheaper, well that's the chance you take, I guess they don't do that much for you anyway if they don't end up being cheap and you don't get them.

The first one is slightly more complicated. If the item only ever costs money, well now it's obvious to others you spent money on microtransactions. Potentially embarrassing in a social game like Destiny. However, if everyone can get them for non-money, they aren't a luxury good anymore, why would I spend money on that. So to sell them, you have to have this confusing mix of will it be easier to get later or I could just spend money on it, and also other people need to not have it for it to be cool (it can't be cool if everyone is doing it).

I don't know, maybe it's a stretch (I'm not an economist), it's just hard for me to feel sorry for people being "lured" into buying luxury goods.