It makes sense for a lot of design, including destinies (Destiny)

by electricpirate , Wednesday, July 22, 2015, 14:31 (3511 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

Microtransactions work really well in two types of games in my oppinion.

1. Casual games where people can kind of lightly engage with them and they have a massive market of people with relatively low commitment to them, and hope a few get really into it.

2. Super hardcore, massively complicated games with a base of people who are deeply into them, play them socially and utilize the online features. The Dota-a-likes being the obvious example of this kind of massive complexity.

Imagine you are a developer, the traditional buy first model rewards you for accessibility. Hey, You get their money up front, so obviously you want to focus on that stuff that can grab people for a sale. Maybe that's big cinema like scenes, or maybe it's gameplay that's immediately apparent. Hewing to this model is a big part of why so many AAA games feel the same right? That first 30 seconds of the game, and the visuals are really how you sell it, and after that, long term engagement isn't so important.

It also adds to the "Box ticking" feature mentality, where people will not buy your game if it misses these crucial features, many of which they will never use (online play! cinematic cutscenes! RPG progression system! Open world!), and this weird arrangement where online servers are now expected, but no long term funding mechanism is apparent.

Contrast that with the rewards of F2P. Since your initial buy in is so cheap, but you make money by getting people deeply engaged. It encourages to do things around that. Hence the staggering complexity and learning curve of something like DOTA or LOL. Different incentive structures prompt different kinds of games, and that's all part of a healthy market.

Destiny sits in somewhat of an awkward spot. It gets close to that kind of lateral complexity with it's crazy mix of weapons/perks/enemies, but it's also a big AAA business model that sells itself on that first 30 seconds of engagement when you first pick up the controller. It also does a horrible job of easing you into that complexity, and literally just kind of dumps you off a cliff mechanically at the end of the campaign.

I dunno, I think some mix of DLC and mictrotransactions be appropriate. If Destiny could drop the expansion prices with some kind of cosmetic micro transactions that would be a net win for everyone, even at the cost of incentivizing more cosmetic development (which I'm generally less interested in)