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I paid for TF2 when it came out, and then they added micro transactions later. I wouldn't mind if I could still play the game that I paid for. For the first few years, TF2 had beautiful art direction; if you've launched it any time in the past several years all the cosmetics items are garish and clash with the original designs.

That's not even to mention the crate and key model introducing the lootbox garbage that has infested games today. I've paid money for cosmetic items I want in other games, but I'll never pay $2.50 for a 1% chance, or even 80% chance of getting what I want.

> if you've launched it any time in the past several years all the cosmetics items are garish and clash with the original designs.

True, there are quite a few items that do not fit in well the original aesthetic.

But nearly all of the items introduced into TF2 are designed by solo creators who get a percentage of the profits for any of their items sold on the store.

So yes, you now have a visually (not functionally) different game, but the upside is that talented designers from all walks of like can make a good living from the profit sharing model Valve has set up.

I'm 40 and likely same gaming history, however I'll disagree with you on TF2 and, while I have not heard of it, Crossout

I played the original QWTF very competitively. It was simply a mod for a Quake. Man, already I want to swoon about mods and how they brought so much life to games (Counterstrike for Halflife anyone?), but I digress! I loved TF2 originally, however once they started adding all of those items it drove me nuts. Now if you wanted to be competitive you had to grind out or buy some of the weapons. These things changed the game. Not in a dramatic way, but enough. If they had just stuck to cosmetic hats I wouldnt have cared at all. Those are just for looks/fun and do not change the game.

As for games like Crossout where you can either grind or buy to speed things up, those are the epitomy of how evil micro transactions are. It is preying on peoples addiction or lack of patience. Any game that has things you can buy to speed up the playing of the game is one I will never play.

Then you have loot box games, where they prey on gambling like addictions. Until I started reading about loot box laws and stuff I never really gave it much thought. I have purchased loot boxes in the past, but I did so out of support for the developers. Overwatch came out and I loved that to death. When they released some new content for free, I was like "here this is my support for your continued efforts".

The Darth Vader trick EA pulled was pretty terrible too. That would be akin to Overwatch releasing a character behind $.

The only kind of micro transaction I like/approve of are cosmetic ones where they do not change how you play the game. You are just buying stuff to look different/"cooler". Fortnite is a successful example of this. Tons of people play for free and are no worse off than those who purchase the Battle Pass.

EA & Apex Legends are crossing the line ever so slightly with the "Free Game" but having other characters be unlockable. So far, if you play just a little bit, you can unlock one for free using the tokens you receive, however many people will just buy to unlock. Also it is rumored their batttle pass will bring another character. I say ever so slightly since, for now, this is a team only game and neither of the unlockable characters are game breaking like a Darth Vader would be all powerful.

Every other kind of micro transaction is essentially a pay to win mechanic, and why play games if you aren't trying to win?

We're at the forefront of "pay to skip the grind" in AAA single player games as well. The YouTube reviewer Skill Up has some really thoughtful commentary on this as pertains to AC: Odyssey in particular:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOrKtZsoy30

Basically, he argues that the game has a really strong start, and an excellent climactic chapter, but the enormously bloated midgame is full of arbitrary level-gates and other nuisances which force you to grind on cookie-cutter side quests. The concern is that this is an attempt to sell impatient players a real-money XP booster. And if it works out for Ubisoft and isn't adequately called out, that we'll see a lot more of this kind of thing going forward.

Yup, thankfully DOTA 2 only sells cosmetic items. I was also pretty disappointed in all of the new tf2 weapons... especially the phlog

You are 10 years my elder.

If you programmed on the C64, is there any lessons/insights that you would teach to someone 10 years younger than you are?

I have heard cool things, like an actual complete user manual, including how to program registers.

I don't think I would download a C64 emulator in my spare time and actually see how it worked for myself.

> I have heard cool things, like an actual complete user manual, including how to program registers.

I think that was the Apple II.

I should still have the C64's user manual tucked somewhere, but it didn't described the internal architecture. I recall there were a couple of examples in Basic to move sprites and to produce sound from the SID "poking" (the PEEK and POKE Basic instruction) values to a few registers.

ISTR there was a complete programmer's guide available from Commodore, but it was a separate purchase.

Indeed, the programmer's reference guide was needed if you really wanted to understand the machine. The user manual had an introduction to basic as far as I can remember :)

Some kind soul has scanned it: http://www.classiccmp.org/cini/pdf/Commodore/C64%20Programme...

I played games on the C64, but never programmed it. I started with GW-BASIC.

I guess it depends on the kind of programmer you are. I consider myself a top-down programmer, where I try to get functionality as easy as possible. If there is a lib, I will use it, and don't need to know what's inside. So for me, these times are way better where you can get crazy amount of functionality in a few lines of code.

But I know plenty of programmers that I label as bottom-up programmers. They love the technology first, and functionality comes second. So for these people, they were able to fully understand a system back then. I worked with plenty of such people in the embedded world.

So if you are into that stuff, I wouldn't waste my time with old systems, but get your hands on something new, but still simple enough to fully comprehend. Such as an Arduino.

But maybe better ask a "bottom-up" developer what they enjoy nowadays.

Cool advice, for me the analogue would be Raspberry Pi's. And indeed, I find it a great way of understanding most parts of the system.

The concern with pay-to-skip-grind revenue models isn't so much with any notion of "fairness" or "integrity" as much as the fact that it greatly incentivizes asshole progression design which typically manifests itself in the form of intentionally-way-more-grindy-than-necessary midgame/lategame progression pathways.

Designing the ideal rate of progression to keep a given game engaging is difficult enough as-is. Too little content gating and you risk burning through all the content too quickly and players getting bored. Too much content gating and the grind begins to feel punitive.

In this context, muddling the mixture further by throwing in this kind of incentive just feels like a recipe for shit-tastic UX/CX.