Hacker News Reader

Comment by falcolas | Hacker News Reader

Imagine being a player who wants to collect new skins or looks in a modern game. In almost any modern game that offers microtransactions. Even indie games are starting to sell cosmetics, so they aren't left out of the feast, err, leaving money on the table.

Your choice is usually limited to: 1) spend money, 2) be unable to get all cosmetics, and occasionally 3) spend hundreds to thousands of hours to obtain the skins.

The worst part is that the average player seems to be fine with this, since it's not selling power - as if power's the only thing that matters in a game.

View on HN

When I played WoW I liked collecting pets and old mounts that were dropped from raid bosses that became solo-able or duo-able. I can't imagine anyone building a modern game where collecting cosmetics is nothing more than a fun side game rather than a revenue stream.

Nintendo is very good, still. BoTW, Animal Crossing.

Not really, in my opinion. Animal Crossing pocket. Mobile Mario Kart.

Even Animal Crossing on the switch gated its expansion behind the new, expensive subscription.

> I can't imagine anyone building a modern game where collecting cosmetics is nothing more than a fun side game rather than a revenue stream.

I’m replying to this specifically, not monetization schemes in general. WoW has/had subscription too.

I'm surprised no one has made an indie AC clone for Android. AC Pocket sucks.

The mobile games are experiments for Nintendo to find out how their games fit in the mobile gaming world. I think they are full aware of how perverse incentives can kill all the fun in games, so for now I give them the benefit of doubt.

ps. the Animal Crossing expansion can also be bought for a fixed price.

As for the last point, plenty of smaller devs, indies, and a number of bigger studios don't fall into the greed and keep that classic simplicity- microtransactions show up in limited ways if at all. I'd say is just slowly becoming more uncommon.

For a triple a game and decent comparison to WOW, Destiny. I would spend time hunting down exotics/cosmetics, with very minor flair items offered for real money. You can buy dlc or battlepass, but usually these end up being pretty big events adding a lot to the game

Power is the only thing that directly affects other people you're playing with. I don't mind if my opponents want to pay for some particular look - them having a nice skin takes nothing away from me (Oh no, I'll "be unable to get all cosmetics", the horror!). I mind a lot if my opponents can pay to have better winning chances, since that part is zero-sum.

This trend is in no way limited to competitive games. Tales of Arise, to list merely one example, is a full priced single player game that offers gobs of cosmetic microtransactions. Assassin's Creed <insert subtitle here> is another such example.

I play a lot of Overwatch and the really nice thing is that it's relatively straightforward to get every single cosmetic in the game.

I've only bought a single skin (Blizzard donated 100% of the proceeds to Breast Cancer Research Foundation), and every other cosmetic was "free". I have nearly all the cosmetics in the game and have spent about 1000 hours (spread over 5 years since launch).

Compared to current games it's a very generous model that I think will end up going away when the sequel launches in the next year or two.

Additionally everything you can pay for is purely cosmetic (there are no weapons or characters to unlock) so even if you got the game today you're not at a disadvantage.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com