Gaming The Microtransaction Investigation

If you look at the data, or indeed the article text, you'll see that the only items that are marked as pay to win are weapons that hold an advantage over weapons and have to be paid for. Cosmetic items (your pants) were not marked as pay to win items.

 

the problem I have with dlc is value or the non microness
I picked up dirt 3 for a tenner, but all the dlcs cost over 20 quid!

gw costumes are also hugely overpriced for the work that's put in to them

 

There are microtransactions everywhere in iPad and iPhone games. What really annoys me is when you need to buy something to get an achievement

 

Investigation or pro-gaming industry propaganda?

The assumption that more TF2 players is better for the game is highly flawed. Playing with people who don't know what an uber charge is or how to use one ruins the game.

I could go on, but I feel the conclusion to this 'investigation' was made before any thought or testing were performed.

Bit-Tech doesn't seem to care about the consumer anymore.

 

Good article -- thanks, Bit-Tech. Nice to have an overview of some of the different issues relating to microtransactions and the practical realities.

 

How come in this didn't include 'runes' in LoL that give small stat boosts that can be purchased in store?

i.e.: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/attachment.php?attachmentid=9892&d=1260760579

You can earn these by playing the game, but it still is a definite encouragement for pay-to-win, even if the benefit is slight. They do have tiers which exponentially increases price for the bonus received and you can have 30 of them which do add up. The other thing is that you are completely blind to your teammates and opponents rune sets, the player know if he has an advantage/disadvantage without doing research themselves?

I don't have too much experience with LoL so I can't really make a precise judgement call on how it really effects game play but it is likely it has to be significant enough to skew the favor of a game (30 runes per player 5 players per team: 150 stat boosts), but I am confused as to why it was ignored completely in an investigation of buyer advantages in free-to-play models. You might argue that most people who purchase, mainly purchase new heroes and costumes which won't alter the core of the game, but you have to consider that when they do this they leave open more free points to then purchase runes.

Many praise the free-to-play system for LoL being fair but it seems they might just be good at downsizing the advantage you can purchase. Someone should collect some data on the difference of the total price of rune sets for winning teams, unfortunately that would have to be collected by the LoL developers themselves who probably won't release such data. At least there is nothing purchase only, this seems to be what is most important to players.

 

Yeah, I mean, how dare people play a videogame that they haven't had the opportunity to enjoy and learn before?

 

I have no problem with MT for cosmetics. It's a good little earner for the company and the free player does not really miss out on anything. The problem is when they sell things that alter the balance, creating a pay-to-win scenario. It alienates those who cannot afford to pay or those whose morals prevent them for paying.

 

There are these amazing things called Passwords, and you can put them on servers! then only people you approve can play!

Also, this was posted on the extra credits facebook page

 

One F2P game which IMHO is completely ruined by micro-transactions is Maplestory (Europe not the other versions). As well as massive amounts of vanity items, the best weapons armour and items are only available by buying tickets which give you a small chance of getting a decent item. Lots of these items are then traded for in-game cash BUT only after using a real cash item on it to make it tradeable. And you can use cash items to improve stats but as its random you have to use another cash item to reset them if you don't get the stats you want!

The developers also regularly update the cash shop items, yet ignore the massive number of major bugs which blight the game nowadays. Gameplay updates are released which then prevent anyone logging on, hackers ruin the gameplay for everyone else and the support system is a complete joke.

The whole game now seems to be focused on milking as much cash as possible out of players. As it probably has a lower age target audience than most other MMORPGs I think this is an appalling state of affairs. If there was ever an example of how not to do micro-transactions Maplestory Europe would be it.

 

A better-researched article might have managed to spell the name of the Eve expansion correctly. You got it wrong in the article as well as in this response, so you're in no position to claim it was a typo.

 

And that's where Guild Wars 2 does it right again compared to other games: http://www.arena.net/blog/mike-obrien-on-microtransactions-in-guild-wars-2