The thing is they made these features as part of the core gameplay then charged for them. It isn’t like you’re paying for a boost or game mode or special companion or something. You’re given the option to earn these features through playing a single player game or pay money and get them faster.
Literally carving out chunks of the base game and offering them up for money as if it is added value. The only value is saving time IN A SINGLE PLAYER GAME. If your single player game has elements that are so tedious or cumbersome that people will literally PAY MORE MONEY to get them on their terms you purposefully built a worse game than you could have.
I got AC:Odyssey during one of the sale cause I dig Greek mythology, had to get cheat engine and spare me the grind for upgrading gears and ship. Like sure you can just keep picking up randomly dropped Epic/Rare and replacement them when you leveling up(there are even player quest that put in specific spot to give you resource for those upgrades, just so other players can farm it) But I ain’t get any time for that, I just cheat engine in max out resource and upgrade my Legendary gears I found through out the game. And you know what? By the end of the game(and I didn’t find every Legendary, like maybe 60~70% of them) it would take me setting the resource to max twice to fully upgrade all my legendary + epic(with perks I like) gears. It would take probably months of my gaming time should I got it on console and can not use cheat engine.
No, upgrade gear is not required to finish the game. But after this experience I decides to never get another Ubisoft AC game nor any RPG on console or with always online feature(which means all transaction are done and authenticated to prevent cheating. ) I’ve done plenty open world, RPG, Monster Hunters without having to cheat. But the recent single player grinding + selling time saver booster pack make me whip out the cheat engine again. And I only cheat those stupid resource gating game that are designed to pad hours in to your play through.
Yeah, they know they are doing though, they are aiming for those that work 9-5 have life and kids and some spare changes and milk them hard. Like this game would take 200 hours to complete fully with X hundreds of hours of post game content that was designed to make your grind, but you can also pay for this [xp booster, resource pack, legendary set, etc] to make sure you can enjoy the post game content if you don’t have the time to grind the game how it’s “meant to be played”.
In my AC:Odessey example, I think at one point the designer might be doing a heavy zelda influenced where you just pick up stuff enemies dropped and the blacksmiths are there for you to repair items broken as resource dump. (which make sense and very fitting of that era and how resource would work) But once that MTX department put their finger in now you have a derailed system. There is a spread sheet that list the hours required to upgrade a legendary piece to which level, and recommended level to get them(as their starting level is fixed and not like the enemy droppped item that matches your level), I saw the numbers and downloaded the cheat engine table the next hour.
The thing is they made these features as part of the core gameplay then charged for them. It isn’t like you’re paying for a boost or game mode or special companion or something. You’re given the option to earn these features through playing a single player game or pay money and get them faster.
Literally carving out chunks of the base game and offering them up for money as if it is added value. The only value is saving time IN A SINGLE PLAYER GAME. If your single player game has elements that are so tedious or cumbersome that people will literally PAY MORE MONEY to get them on their terms you purposefully built a worse game than you could have.
I got AC:Odyssey during one of the sale cause I dig Greek mythology, had to get cheat engine and spare me the grind for upgrading gears and ship. Like sure you can just keep picking up randomly dropped Epic/Rare and replacement them when you leveling up(there are even player quest that put in specific spot to give you resource for those upgrades, just so other players can farm it) But I ain’t get any time for that, I just cheat engine in max out resource and upgrade my Legendary gears I found through out the game. And you know what? By the end of the game(and I didn’t find every Legendary, like maybe 60~70% of them) it would take me setting the resource to max twice to fully upgrade all my legendary + epic(with perks I like) gears. It would take probably months of my gaming time should I got it on console and can not use cheat engine.
No, upgrade gear is not required to finish the game. But after this experience I decides to never get another Ubisoft AC game nor any RPG on console or with always online feature(which means all transaction are done and authenticated to prevent cheating. ) I’ve done plenty open world, RPG, Monster Hunters without having to cheat. But the recent single player grinding + selling time saver booster pack make me whip out the cheat engine again. And I only cheat those stupid resource gating game that are designed to pad hours in to your play through.
Jupp. The thing with selling booster is that the company is saying “our game isn’t worth your time so here is a way to skip playing the game”.
Like wtf? I pay money for a game to pay money to skip the game?
I can’t fathom how people are willing to do that.
Like going to the movies, paying for a ticket, giving the cashier like 10bugs extra and the you go home without watching the movie.
If someone would tell you they do this you would think they are fucking crazy.
Yeah, they know they are doing though, they are aiming for those that work 9-5 have life and kids and some spare changes and milk them hard. Like this game would take 200 hours to complete fully with X hundreds of hours of post game content that was designed to make your grind, but you can also pay for this [xp booster, resource pack, legendary set, etc] to make sure you can enjoy the post game content if you don’t have the time to grind the game how it’s “meant to be played”.
In my AC:Odessey example, I think at one point the designer might be doing a heavy zelda influenced where you just pick up stuff enemies dropped and the blacksmiths are there for you to repair items broken as resource dump. (which make sense and very fitting of that era and how resource would work) But once that MTX department put their finger in now you have a derailed system. There is a spread sheet that list the hours required to upgrade a legendary piece to which level, and recommended level to get them(as their starting level is fixed and not like the enemy droppped item that matches your level), I saw the numbers and downloaded the cheat engine table the next hour.