Rantology: Talking about Microtransactions

So one of the biggest things in the game industry right now is the trend for companies to want to rip ever last dime you have from your wallet and give you seemingly little in return.  Whether it be different amount for different editions of the game, a plethora of cosmetic items and virtual currency bought with real money for in game items and rewards, or the loot box system that started coming under fire last year when the game launched.  However, some of these are more insidious than others because they don't offer the player a guaranteed product that they can judge to be worth their money.  Now the debate of whether this is gambling or not I will try to avoid, as it has been covered, beaten, and then covered again over the years (full disclosure it is textbook gambling and if you don't think so please go fuck off).  No what I want to do is talk about the cost of games, the ethics of such a thing and why it's dangerous, even if you can afford it.

The Cost of Games

Full disclosure I have bought loot boxes in the past.  Do I regret my decision?  Not necessarily.  Am I adding to the problem?  Absolutely.  But that's the first part of the problem, admitting there is one and knowing when you are being part of it.  Loot boxes are a problem, micro-transactions are a problem.  I have added to that problem.  I fully admit that and I'm not going to beat around the bush with it.  What really needs to be addressed here is the value behind this as a service.  What does that mean?  Simply put at what point in time does a product stop being valuable to the consumer?  This is one of the most researched topics in human history as companies want to maximize their profits and their sales.  Lets use cereal as an example.  If I am a large cereal company like Kelloggs and I am selling boxes of oh so delicious Frosted Flakes to my customers, I need to make sure that I give enough product at the right price to both make money, and yet still have it affordable enough to make a profit from. Meaning if I were to charge $10 a box I would have a huge profit margin, but I probably wont sell a lot of boxes due to not many consumers seeing the value in my product.  Thus I'd need to sacrifice my profit margin for sales to earn more money overall.  This is pretty simple economics so far.

But how does all of this apply to the games industry?  Well simply put the industry has agreed upon a price of $60 retail for a game, and while this price will vary in countries because of exchange rates (except Australia because you cheeky fuckers are weird) this is generally the agreed upon price.  While that seems a fair price to pay, publishers will argue otherwise, claiming that they don't make all the money off of the sale and while they technically do make most of it and are recovering some losses from their earlier contracts (basically the cost they pay the developer, console and brand licensing, and the costs to advertise the game are all paid up at front while the profits and retailer portion is actually earned at the cash register).  So if we take a game with a $100 Million budget (and assuming a retailer rater of 15%) they would need to sell roughly 2 Million copies to make their money back on that project, over that to start making money.  However with the advent of digital distribution a player buying a digital copy of the game off their platforms distribution service will effectively cut out the 15% retail cut giving that to the publisher, thus making them more money (which is why we've seen a huge push for digital sales in recent years).

Publishers will say that every game should need to make its money back on its own, and while that is a statement I can understandably agree with, that is not the reality.  See far too many games exist for this kind of a market to effectively exist (saying that roughly 1 million copies need be sold for every $50 Million in costs) especially considering even your lightly played games still have the expectation of being of a certain quality (sorry I don't like clipping Janice!!)  When you break this down you must realize that there is a minimum amount  that is needed for that quality to be achieved.  These costs come in the form paying developers, artists, voice actors, musicians, and all the other staff at a development studio to make the game (who typically don't see a dime after the game is launched based on the games success unlike other forms of entertainment media), and staff at the publisher, and console companies too. So it's understandable why they cost so much, but the publisher obviously wants a return on their investment.

Now lets go back to our Kelloggs example above for this next part.  Say I have a not significant amount of customers wanting a new type of cereal, like Bran Flakes for example.  Obviously this isn't going to be a large seller, but the demand for this product is big enough that the costs wont be too absurd to make it, so it would make sense for us as a company to make this and sell this.  Now I may end up losing some money on it occasionally but it makes people happy and it gets the Kelloggs name out there driving more sales of my other brands so I'm okay with it especially considering I have my guaranteed Frosted Flakes to pick up the slack on an off month for it.  This same idea applies to the game industry.  For every game like Madden that makes EA a TON of money, ten games like Dead Space exist to fill a more niche roll in the market for a specific type of game and to ultimately make my consumers happy so I get a better rep.  Yea, Dead Space may not have been a super huge block buster hit, but it does have a cult following of die hard fans who will gladly buy more games in the series because it gives them what they want.  It may even lose money here and there, but the good rep with your consumer base pays off more than well enough.  This is a fact that is lost on these more digital entertainment companies because they're seen as a premium product and believe they're above the rules for other companies.  The no longer respect their Bran Flakes.

The ill advised ethics of micro-transactions in the digital age

As many of us know and will agree to micro-transactions and loot boxes are largely disliked, but they are still be driven by out ever increasing "want it now" mentality.  Why play the game and spend time earning things if you can just pay a little extra and get it right now?  That hat that looks nice, well either 3 hours of gameplay, or hey, toss me $5 and I'll just give it to you!  This is the problem, companies don't consider the alternative besides what they will gain from it.  As someone who has worked selling games some people decide to not buy a game simply because there are micro-transactions in the game.  The cost of entry is already $60, why should they be forced to suffer through a game hallmarking the extra money they can chose to spend simply because a publisher wants to make more money on top of that?

The problem with this is if I'm paying a cost of entry of $60 already, which is a lot, I should not be pressured into giving you more money.  If you want to make more money simply charge more money for the product at the register.  I'd personally be okay paying $5-$10 more per title if it meant I wouldn't get rimjobbed with micro-transactions all day while playing my games.  Because I'll fully admit, they are tempting, they're designed to be so.  The system is made such that it is supposed to be tempting, so the temptation is an additional price, and if I'm not paying anything to get in then I'll gladly deal with the temptation and will actually more than likely to slide a few dollars to the game if I genuinely enjoy it.

Recent events *cough* Battlefront 2 *cough* have really encouraged i'll used ethics by not only time-gating but also pay-gating characters and having an almost 0 skill barrier behind it but instead hey, give EA $100 and you can be almost the deadliest thing on the planet thanks to it.  Which is a shame because I was looking forward for this game.  While I do want to keep talking about Battlefront 2 and Star Wars as a whole that will probably be a separate post.

The long and short of the ethics here is that there are no ethics for them in a $60+ retail game, even if it is cosmetic in nature only.  The cost of entry has already been achieved, if you feel that this isn't enough, simply charge more.

Why micro-transactions are dangerous

Now as we have seen with preorders and season passes and I can cry wolf about slippery slopes all day the fact is that this isn't even the worst part.  No the worst part is in the future we're probably going to see parts of the game split up and served to us on a silver platter for premium prices, because lets face it, companies want to nickle and dime us for every last dollar we have.  See that really cool Halo game?  Well if you want to play certain pieces of it only you can, but surprise surprise buying it piece wise will be more expensive in the long run, and even if you bundle them you may be lucky to get it for the same price.  Imagine paying $30 each for campaign, competitive, and cooperative multiplayer, and then this being touted as a good thing because players can get and pay only $30* for the games, but the real cost could be up to $90.  For an example of this look at what is currently happening with games like Hitman where they're breaking the story up into pieces.  And while other franchises have been doing this thank god they don't have the audacity to charge over $60 and are reasonably priced experiences.

Honestly the real slippery slope is what will publishers think up next to try and shoehorn as much money out of people as they can because they can.  The issues are what comes next, what comes after, how do we protect ourselves as consumers from this bullshit, because it is bullshit.  I know I, for one, will be boycotting Battlefront 2 because of this weeks revelations, at least until it's only a $20 game or I can get a cheap copy preowned (because fuck EA and fuck money going into their pockets because they don't deserve that shit ever).  Join me in pledging to not buy lootboxes, not to give in to the pressure that they represent, and not to give into the micro-transaction shit anymore to show that we wont make them profitable.

Really if you give even a fraction of a shit about the games you play and the quality of your experience you need to not buy these horrible misguided mistakes that we have been forced to endure.  Vote with your wallets, don't make these profitable, show that they're a waste of money as they wont make money for the developer.  Till next time folks.

Destiny 2 Review

Destiny 2
Developer: Bungie
Publisher: Activision
Platform: Playstation 4 (reviewed), Xbox One, PC via Battle.Net
U.S. Release Date: September 6, 2017 (PS4, XB1), October 24, 2017 (PC)

By now I have been an overly content owner of a Playstation 4 for a little over 3 years.  My first PS4 was the white Destiny Limited Edition console back in 2014, and this was something I of course lined up at midnight to get, ripped open, and stayed up all night playing.  I was hooked.  I beat the game that day, ran strikes till I was blue in the face, and just kept on going and going until I passed out around 1 am on the 11th.  Destiny has been a game that I have kept near and dear to my heart, not only because it was my first game on the platform, or my first Platinum trophy, but because the world that Bungie had so carefully crafted (even if it was locked behind the grimoire not in game) was something that I fell in love with and wanted every part of.  I was in love, and still am.  So naturally I bucked up, dropped the insane $250 for the Collector's Edition, and lets just say that it is possible to fall in love twice.

So, this entire thing is going to be riddled with spoilers.  Like a ridiculous amount of spoilers, especially considering I'm not even going to bother to post this until after I finish the raid (a little over a week post release).  Does that mean you should stop reading?  I'm not going to tell you not to, but there is a lot of spoilers, and later I'm going to throw on my spinfoil hat and talk about a few theories I have.  Sooooooooo, here we go:

******************************SPOILER WARNING *********************************

For anyone who played the open beta over summer, you'd know very well the setup to the game: Ghaul, a renegade Cabal badass, is here to take the light for himself.  Now, we've dealt with some pretty serious threats before such as Atheon, Time's Confulx, in the Vault of Glass, Crota and Oryx, literal gods of the Hive, Skolas, the Kell of Wolves who sought to reunite the Fallen houses, and even SIVA, the nanotechnology that was the undoing of the legendary Lords of Iron who were the first to bring order to humanity after The Collapse.  But none of those before hand have even come close to accomplishing what Ghaul did.

The opening scene shows Cayde-6 entering into the Vanguards outpost in the Tower, supposedly returning from slacking off somewhere, only to be greeted by Ikora and Zavala indicating that the perimeter seems to have been breached and the sensors are not responding.  And then the Cabal invaded.  Ghaul and his Red Legion seemingly sweep over the city like a plague that we guardians can barely stop as a massive six armed ship approaches the Traveler with his fleet laying waste to the City.  In the meantime, Ghost and our guardian are on our way back from a patrol mission when we are unable to raise the Tower to report in. We arrive to a partially destroyed Tower, where the Vanguard, Shaxx, and Holiday are mounting rescue operations for the citizens who are still alive.  We meet up with Cayde and Shaxx who help us press onwards toward Zavala, who is guarding against the onslaught, and Ikora, who is desperately searching for the Speaker.  When Ikora discovers her failure, she shows us why she is the Warlock Vanguard and proceeds to wreak havoc across the battlefield while you head to meet Holiday for a ride to Ghauls ship to cut off the head of their assault.

Arriving on the ship, in spectacular style I might add, you are tasked with disabling the shields to allow for a bombardment, however things do not go as planned as the Cabal are able to overcome the City's defenses and you are one of the only ones left in the fray.  Intercepted by Ghaul, he reveals his plan of entombing the Traveler to steals its light and cut it off from the Guardians, while spartan kicking you off his ship a la 300 style.  Naturally things don't go his way as you survive.  Desperate to make it to safety you recover Ghost, escape the city and are followed by a Hawk you glimpsed in a vision during your fall (predicting many things, including the enemy of the Traveler) that leads you to safety.  During your journey you come across a human by the name of Hawwthorne, a non-Guardian who lives outside of the city and was relatively unaffected by the attack, she is setting up a gathering point in Europe by the broken shard of the Traveler, her goal not to retake the City, but to build a safe haven that is defensible in case the Cabal come looking.  Helping her to set up her network and draw in other survivors you learn that Zavala is rallying the surviving Guardians on Titan to mount a counterattack, and while Hawthorne is hesitant, she agrees that this is your decision and you must do what you believe in.

Once landing upon Titan you discover the Hive have found their way there as well, and are attempting to summon Oryx's sister Savathun, as well to the system.  So naturally you get to work to foil their plans, and set up the moon for staging operations once again.  Though even with the power online, and some secret Cabal messages decrypted you're not out of the woodwork yet as the Cabal have a super weapon pointed at the sun ready to blow the galaxy apart should their plan fail.  Zavala calls on you to go to Nesus and rescue Cayde and find Ikora.  Arriving on Nesus you find Cayde stuck in a Vex teleportation loop, with a crashed colony ship AI, Failsafe, watching with pleasure as he struggles.He tells you to retrieve the teleporter he was working on, as he feels it will be necessary to get to Ghaul, despite the super weapon.  After some convincing he tells you Ikora is on Io, the last place the Traveler touched, where she frequently meditates.  On Io you discover a way to destabalize the super weapon with the help of a broken down Warmind (given the designation Jys, a possible reference to Charlemanges sword Joyeuse).

With the Vanguard at your back you return to Earth to formulate a plan of attack.  You need to slip up to the weapon, disable it, and escape before the Vanguard launch their assault to take out Ghaul in the city.  Hawthore tells them of a way inside and battle plans are drawn up which include you stealing a high ranking Cabal officers personal vessel, but like everything else that involves Cayde, the plan goes awry and it is up to you to square off against Ghaul in the end.  He is able to seize the power of the light and a fierce battle ensues, ending in Ghaul becoming a massive creature made of light and calling himself a new god.  But just in the nick of time the Traveler wakes up and shows Ghaul whose boss.

*********************************END SPOILERS**********************************

(mostly)

Whew, that was a fun summary, and believe me I skimmed over a good chunk of it hitting mostly the highlights.  Anyrate one of the biggest stand out features to me for Destiny 2 is the gun play, the first game brought us around two three different weapon slots with different types going in different places for maximum effectiveness in combat.  You had a Primary, Secondary, and Heavy, which while it worked out nicely in PvE, it really overplayed it's hand in PvP, however this new system which replaces Special and Heavy with Energy and Power respectfully fixes a lot of those problems.  The way this works is all Auto Rifles, Scout Rifles, Hand Cannons, Sidearms, Pulse Rifles, and the new Submachine Gun can be either Primary or Energy, with Primary dealing non-elemental damage, and Energy being around for those shielded foes.  This means that you no longer need to deal with people in PvP running around with godly amounts of Sniper Rifle ammo (formerly a Special, now it has been moved to Power weapon), but it makes your PvE games require a bit more foresight.  Beyond just what and how you can carry, each gun feels unique and different from each other, and acquiring the same gun twice isn't going to result in a different gun based on its perks, every gun with the same name has the same perks, so much less farming is required to get quality weapons.  Fighting and shooting is fun, engaging, and you can really tell Bungie nailed their "30 seconds of fun" mantra with this one.

Along with the weapons I would be remiss if I didn't discuss the games armor as well, as each set plays to the class descriptions very well.  Titans, the games beat stick, look much larger and bulkier than in the previous entry, where they didn't feel as large and at times would even come off as being quite slim.  Warlocks almost all wear longer robes now, more reminiscent of a scholar or researcher, while their bonds are very detailed and helmets sleek and streamline.  The Hunters as well have been slimmed down overall to appear more mobile, threatening, and stealthy with their cloaks.  The one complaint that, like many others, have is that the shader system is kind of a crap shoot.  You see shaders are set individually now, and can also be applied to weapons and ships as well as armor, and while that isn't a bad thing, a lot of the better looking shaders are locked behind the games Bright Engrams, which is a form of microtransaction.  Since you can earn these in game, I'm not all that upset, as you earn them rather quickly, but I am a little disappointed that there isn't an alternative way to get them whether that be spending Glimmer (the games currency), or being rewarded through other means it makes the game feel a bit more grindy than I personally feel that it should be.  Either way this issue should be addressed as it would only serve to discourage casual players down the road.

One of my favorite things that Bungie did was redesign the rank up system to better encourage players to play the game, farm activities, and increase the number of rewards that you recieve.  The way it used to work was you needed a sum of 1500 (at the first level) to 2500 (pretty much after level 5) reputation in order to level up, well unfortunately reputation, while it wasn't capped, was slow to earn as you earned between 10-100 per patrol, and around 125 on a Strike mission and Crucible victory (half for a loss), that's not even to mention sub factions which earned at half the rate of Vanguard and Crucible, so while you got it for all activities, it was a MUCH slower gain than your primary sources, and for players like me who almost never did crucible it was laughable.  The new system uses tokens, which can be gained and turned in on any character, so you are no longer locked into receiving rewards by playing that character.  So if you want to gear an alt, grind on a main and redeem on that alt, if you want to kit out your main in raid gear first, turn in all you raid tokens on them and get them all the sweet sweet raid loot.  Overall the system is much more rewarding as you can earn multiple rewards and ranks in a shorter amount of time than you could previously, which will only serve to keep casual players coming back for more and more Destiny.

Bungie, finally offers in game clan support for Destiny 2, and will actually actively reward players for being in a clan.  See now you have a clan banner which levels up over a season (unknown how long this will last) which allows clan members to enjoy increased rewards for playing the game and completing events such as completing public events, decrypting engrams, defeating Cabal, etc.  Plus with an in game interface it makes clans and clan management all the easier for the end user as you don't need to go online, or open the app, or any weird thing like that.

Crucible has also changed, in some ways for the better, in some ways for the worse.  All game modes have been converted to 4v4 away from either 3v3 or 6v6, and for competetive and trials the change is welcome and actually an improvement, in quickplay and casual the change really drags on your sanity.  See the biggest changes which affect that are the fact that there in an increase in the time to kill (TTK) for players, which translates to a larger importance being place on team play and team shooting, which while a positive aspect, doesn't help quickplay as it has historically been a place for players to relax and not really care about team play, or moving together, just getting out and doing some PvP.  In casual play you often encounter 3 or 4 stacks who will work together because their preferred game mode is there and they dominate over the other team.

The final two major gameplay changes come in the form of the Nightfall and Raid.  The Nightfall is no longer reset on wipe, but instead you get a respawn ticker of around 25 seconds, and the entire strike is timer based, starting at 11 minutes and working its way to 0, at 0 you are reset to orbit and you must start over.  Some weeks you have a variant option to increase the amount of time you have by performing a certain task, whether that is killing enemies, jumping through vex hoops (literally), killing oracles, or other means.  This makes the strike more forgiving for less experiences players, but still offers the challenge for more experienced ones.  The Raid on the other hand, is Cabal themed like the rest of the base game, but instead of fighting The Red Legion, you are set against Emperor Calus and his Loyalists who seeks to test you to see if you are worth joining him.  One of the biggest things is the fact that the Raid has 4 different wings which must be unlocked through a series of collecting and defending standards from and endless wave of Cabal forces, after you are able to collect and defend all 3 your way to the next challenge is open.  The challenges are genuinely fun and well thought out, even if not obvious at first.  Our team went in blind and only had one or two issues because of some non-obvious mechanics we encountered, overall though we ran into little difficulty and mostly just needed to refocus after getting stressed.  The raid also offeres a second set of loot in the form of underbelly keys, which reward engrams, tokens, and a chance at exotics, each of these chests however either must be found, or is locked behind a door that is protected by "watchers" who must be silently eliminated.  The final large change here is the addition of the guided games feature which allows players to search for a group for Nightfall and Raid activities (even though raid isn't quite out yet), then these allow clans who sign up to PUG (pick up group) players to be rated, and a higher rating means an easier time of getting people in the future.

The final thing that I would be remiss to not mention is the soundtrack.  Honestly when I think of Bungie I always thing of how wonderful their music and composition is.  Really they're one of the stand out companies for it (standing among CD Projekt RED and Bioware), and in Destiny 2 it shows.  The ambiance set is perfect, the highs are accentuated excellently, the lows are disheartening, and everything in between is executed to a T.  I have yet to look it up, but if there is a soundtrack, and I can get my hands on it I'm going to because I can honestly see myself at the gym working out with this music on in the background, it's THAT FUCKING GOOD.

Overall, while the game does have a few flaws, they are largely out spoken by the sheer amount of content to do, the improved drops and loot system, and the expanded and ease of access of lore in game.  Destiny 2 has some large quality of life improvements, genuine and unforced humor, and a fresh new take on the Destiny name.  I'm excited to see where Destiny 2 goes down the road with it's DLC, and I hope you are too.  Destiny 2 gets 9 completely incorrect names for Ghaul, out of 10.

Rantology: I'm actually okay with the micro transactions in Destiny 2

So  we saw the release of Destiny 2, and while my review will be coming after I clear the raid next week, I can tell you that I have enjoyed what I have played so far. Despite how refreshing the game is though, people have already taken to dismissing the game because of micro transactions that are hamfistedly shoved into it via Eve Levante and her Eververse. Now in the original Destiny these offered exclusive rewards (mainly cosmetic save for sparrows that could be used in SRL) and it was understandably upsetting due to it's paygating of content.

Destiny 2 however seems to have learned from past mistakes as the prestige system now awards guardians with these premium rewards for obtaining higher levels so even the cosmetic aspects to them can be acquired without spending a dime. This includes the controversial new shaders (which are consumed upon changing even though they are applied per item now), and exotic ships and sparrows. I'm....okay with this. I've never had an issue of a system like this that offers cosmetic options to come outside of a paid manner, it adds a level of "one more" to it to keep players playing, and not stay stagnant. I know some will argue against this, but honestly I don't have an issue, its an overall positive addition to a game that will only encourage me to play even more.

Destiny 2 Beta

*Full disclosure, I played and wrote this the day after the Beta but never got around to posting it for whatever reason.  So with that kept in mind I still wanted to share my thoughts on how I saw it and what is coming this September.*

So, I've made it no secret, for those who know me, that I play Destiny on a somewhat religious basis.  As in, I play it every week and have cleared most of the content and am probably floating around a 95% completion of the game.  So naturally I logged on this week to the PS4 preload exclusive of the Destiny 2 Beta.  And really all I can say is that I'm honestly amazed so far, and not in a bad way.

The Beta offered up 5 things in total, two of them were timed/limited access, the rest are open access for the duration of it.  We got exactly what was shown at E3, 2 multiplayer modes and a strike on open access, the first story mission "Homecoming" on limited access, and a new social space dubbed "The Farm" on a timed trial for an hour on Sunday.  While the content wasn't quite up to what I would have liked (I sincerely wanted a small patrol area to get a real feel for the size of the game, though the strike did do a good job of this), it was still valuable content.  The strike, The Inverted Spire, centered around the Red Legions attempts to retrieve Vex weapons technology from one of their minds hidden beneath the ground on Nessus.  A rather long strike that starts in what I'm assuming is a patrol area, and it was rather smart of Bungie to not give us access to sparrows during this or I would have never actually finished it, though I did encounter some pikes and was able to explore a bit.  The strike shows off how massive Destiny 2 really seems to be, at least if this strike is anything similar to others that we currently see in Destiny right now.

The walk/descent to your destination is quite significant and shouldn't be taken lightly as you needed to traverse literal giant drills to get where you're going.  Another thing that really spoke to how committed Bungie is to Destinys long term viability is how alive this time around feels.  When we loaded in I experienced a couple of different things at different times, from the previously mentioned pikes, to battles between Fallen and Cabal, or Fallen and Vex, and even Vex and Cabal occurring at different places.  The only ways out of the landing zones that I checked were blocked off by walls to prevent players from going to far (or so I'm guessing), but I still had my thirst for curiosity quenched.

Crucible was another matter completely.  While I like the idea of 4v4, I do wish that 6v6 could still remain a thing or even get bumped to 8v8.  Crucible in the Beta was offered in two modes on two different maps (I can't remember their names but nothing really striking stands out about them, they are fun though).  Casual was control, while competitive was the new game mode Countdown.  Countdown was really interesting and reminded me A LOT of Call of Duty, but more hectic and more decisive, especially for the attacking team.  I can really see it being the new norm in Trials, dubbed Trials of the Nine in Destiny 2.  While fun, I did find myself having a lot more fun during the strike.

Finally the last large thing offered was a new social space known as The Farm.  A genuinely open space, with lots of little things to explore and fun to be had, it was nice trying to guess who would be where.  There is a small soccer field in which players can play a rocket league esque game to 3.  The Vanguard have a barn, and Tess Everress has a weird tent thing.  Oh and a holographic engram which was cool.  There was also what appeared to be a new type of sparrow like vehicle, which would be kinda cool just to open up options for travel.

Overall the beta was very well done and definitely has me excite for what's to come.  I hope that it is not a standalone sample because what I saw has true promise.