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Comment by hutzlibu | Hacker News Reader

There are free to play Multiplayer games, where microtransactions are for skins and other cosmetic stuff. Thats fine by me.

In other games, you can make progress faster if you pay. That is more annoying, but still no pay to win, or dishonest.

But all those lootbox games and arcade ones, designed to lure you into more buying, well, everybod gets what they deserve.

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I personally think direct micro payments for skins, even without randomness and lootboxes, are still problematic. They aren't as bad as lootboxes, which are clearly designed to extract money, but their problem is that the potentially limitless money you can spend. If you go into a game knowing that it costs $60, you know that's how much you're spending on it. If you go into a game that hands out skins for $2.50 a piece, there's no limit, and unless you're good at making and sticking to a budget (which is a large portion of the world, especially kids who have no experience!) you can just as likely spend way more than $60.

This is worse when such things as skins end up getting tied to status within the game world. Fortnite doesn't have randomized loot boxes anymore, but that hasn't stopped kids from spending tons on V-bucks, especially since they get bullied if they don't [1]. Seriously, just look at videos of people bullying "defaults" on Fortnite. I think it's especially bad because there is a way to finance long-running multiplayer games: battle passes. It's an upfront cost so you always know what you're getting into.

1: https://www.polygon.com/2019/5/7/18534431/fortnite-rare-defa...

The budget to win is the cost of the game.

If you're an aesthetics whore, welp.

You're completely ignoring the second half of my comment.

"Seriously, just look at videos of people bullying "defaults" on Fortnite"

Well, but thats the beauty of a shooter game. If theres some moron fixed on style trying to bully, you can just shoot him and enjoy his whining. Knowing that cosmetics are no match for skills.

And about spending in general:

I believe that is a valuable skill to be learned as early as possible, don't you think?

So if a kid spends all his pocket money for the month on day 1. There is opportunity to learn.

(and if he spends all his parents money, then there is opportinity for the parents to learn)

When there is an option to pay for faster progress the developer is incentivized to make the overall progression slower and grindier in the hopes that more people buy those boosts. See EA Battlefront 2's original hero progression system or to a lesser degree AC Odyssey.

Yes it is.

But it still means, that people with more time than money get to play the game. And those with more money than time, can take a fast dive here and there.

I've seen that work (more or less) in some games.

But this happens for games you pay full price for, so you get the worst of both worlds.

True. Thats why I don't buy or play those games.

Neither do I play pay to win games.

Check if a game has IAPs before paying the full price, and skip it if it does.

I think one of the Dead Space games was the first EA title to both be full price and have IAPs for materials you could also slooowly grind?

Also Devil May Cry 5.

> In other games, you can make progress faster if you pay. That is more annoying, but still no pay to win, or dishonest.

But who is to say you aren’t being manipulated to buy those microtransactions? Their presence gives designers the wrong incentives.

You are. Full stop. There are entire industry talks and patents dedicated to manipulating you into purchasing microtransactions.

But strangely enough, I never made a microtransaction in a game, despite I played such titles quite a bit.

>There are free to play Multiplayer games, where microtransactions are for skins and other cosmetic stuff. Thats fine by me.

Actually no, it's not fine. Because if the cosmetic stuff would have been obtainable just through game play, it would have been easier to obtain. If it's available for real money, they have an incentive to make it more grindy to obtain otherwise. Consciously or not.

And if you think the availability of those cosmetic items doesn't affect you - consciously or not - you're deluding yourself.

No matter how they're implemented, microtransactions are a burden on either your wallet or your time.

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