This is why I prefer PC games that only cost virtual money for upgrades, games like Roblox, League of Legends, Animal Jam, Fnaf and the overlord of gaming, MINECRAFT!!!!
Speaking of these games, when are we going to see some comics on these games?
With arcade games, you knew exactly what you were getting when you put money in the machine. With lootboxes you don’t, you just have to gamble that they will drop what you want.
As far as I’m concerned, the good days of gaming are the days between the demise of arcades and the rise of microtransactions. When the gameplay wasn’t compromised in order to squeeze more money out of players.
To be fair, it did still exist then, it was just less transparent.
Certain games were made unreasonably harder on purpose as the age of “rental” started, so that the game would be more difficult and you’d have to have it for an additional rental period. The Lion King game is the main one I know about, but I’m sure others existed, and numerous other ways marketing departments worked to squeeze a few extra dimes out of us.
with arcade amount of entertainment you got on dollar per hour ratio depended of you skill, with todays lootboxes amount of entertainment you get depends on how wide your wallet is
Thankfully, quite a few freemium titles are surprisingly well balanced in that regard, so there’s not even any waiting (or very little) involved, as with Sailor Moon Drops, or the late, lamented MLP: Puzzle Party – money there will simply help things on a bit.
That said, the best titles do, mostly, seem to remain paid-only, even if that can get expensive – last week saw the iOS releases of Phoenix Wright: Spirit of Justice, The Witness, and The Journey Down: Chapter 3.
It really depends, some ios games let you try out a part of it before purchase, others it’s right up front, these are usually between 2-5$ but freemiums, the microtransactions are anywhere between 1$ at the cheapest and with the least returns and 50$ with (imho) way more than you need… but I’m mostly a pc gamer and Nintendo fan, so I may not be the most reliable on this.
Kirbyshade
I just realized I forgot to mention that the big name ios games (like Final Fantasy Tactics) can be between 5-20$ much like oc games… but on your phone, in the middle of anywhere!
HamCat
FFT!!! :D
I am eagerly awaiting a relative to give me FFTA2 for a holiday because I’m too lazy.
It’s simple really:
1. Steal everyone’s stuff
2. Train as Hunter/Paladin (and there’s a samurai like class that is even better than hunter I think, but hunter has sonic boom which is ranged AoE)
3. …Still here? *Sonic BOOM*
OR
1. Steal Everyone’s stuff
2. Max out assassin speed
3. Get concentrate
4. LAST
5. BREATH
6. KO 95% ACCURACY
Wait, Pony Puzzle Party is dead?? I love that game… it still runs on my phone. Does that mean support is just dead? So much for reporting glitches (not the cat, that’s someone else’s problem). But you’re right, it was really well-balanced about the micros.
The biggest difference between arcade games and micro-transactions is that with micro-transactions you’ve generally already shelled out twenty to sixty dollars *buying* the game, where the arcade games are not owned by you and you are only paying to play it at that point in time. As Jim Stirling puts it, micro-transactions are usually part of a fee2pay model, that would make arcades fee2play.
Well, In many ways you’re right in that comparison, but I feel the idea of having that type of “Pay-to-continue” right on your phone or somewhere like that is kind of worrying, as to arcades where its only available when you actually go there, and as a result can’t really be exploited to have children steal from their parents as easily.
PIXEL HAS A GOOD POINT, BUT TO BE FAIR YOU DON’T BUY THE ARCADE GAMES, THAT’S WHY THEY MAKE YOU SPEND COINS ON THEM, UNLIKE THE CONSOLE GAMES THAT YOU ACTUALLY BOUGHT, THE FREEMIUM GAMES ARE GAMES THAT YOU ALREADY OWN, & IT SEEMS THAT THEY CHARGE YOU MORE MONEY THAT THE ARCADES DID BACK THEN
SORRY FOR THE TRIPLE POST BUT I FORGOT ANOTHER THING, THE FREEMIUM GAMES ONLY GIVE YOU LIMITED CONTENT WHEN YOU UPLOAD THEM, SO YOU HAVE TO PAY TO UNLOCK THE REST OF THE GAME, THE ARCADES ARE ALREADY COMPLETE GAMES WHICH YOU CAN FINISH ENTIRELY WITH ONLY ONE QUARTER IF YOU ARE GOOD ENOUGH
Rojo, you may want to have your Caps Lock key checked. I think it may be stuck.
And this does make me feel pretty old since I was born in the time before the Atari 2600 so I’ve lived through the arcade days and the F2P phone/tablet games. Also I love Pixel’s expressions, they’re always so emotive.
I think they do it as a shtick. They aren’t trying to defy anything or be rude, just accent their work I guess. On the other hand, Rojo y Naranja means “Red and Orange” in spanish. A certain comic has a character that is associated with red and types in all caps. Coincidence? Maybe.
I’m with gamer on this one. She may be right, but damnit, thats hitting below the belt.
You are not supposed to go scratching the lenses of nostalgia goggles.
This is why I feel the best freemium/free2play games are the ones where you get the base game for free (or a small nominal sum), and if you’re willing to wait out refill times and the like, you can continue playing for free, while real-world money spent will get you bonuses like more playtime right now (instead of later when your playtime meter refills on its own), or neat loot (that may be available for free but in exchange for a slow grind), or something similar that can maybe give you an edge or better enjoyment but isn’t necessary to play the game.
The worst offender I’ve played quickly escalated to a point where one could go DAYS just collecting coins and waiting to amass enough to actually do anything else BUT collect coins. Not only that, but you couldn’t just leave it sitting for those few days for the coins to accumulate. You had to log in every HOUR to manually collect them. It was seriously unfun, and the only way to escalate anything by that point was to spend real-world money on an exponential scale. Almost every other initially-free game I’ve played on mobile had similar speed-up play-more options, but were still fundamentally playable without that.
I agree with others who say that if I’ve already paid a decent base cost for the game then I do NOT want to be forced into microtransactions to continue my enjoyment of said game. Microtransactions should, in my opinion, be limited to games that are either free for the base version, or have a very small base cost.
Slight difference. If you bought the arcade game, you could play it for free. Of course they’re giving the game away for free so that SORT OF makes up for it. Basically they’re trying to BE the arcade machine owner without actually doing any more work than the arcade machine creator.
Except you didn’t pay $100 before you were allowed to start playing an arcade game. And when you dropped a quarter the outcome wasn’t random, with a bunch of trash and a tiny chance of getting what you actually wanted.
There are games with good MT practices, but they are becoming rare.
You know, when you really look at it, Pixel missed one thing about the arcade games. Either way, when you’re playing the games, you’re spending one of two (if not both) valuable things: money and time. While modern mobile games have both options, you can either make in game purchases, or wait for whatever it is you need, most often lives, to refill. While with arcade games, you’re spending both your money and your time which, by comparison, commits the bigger crime. They were generally better games to begin with, however, and a lot of them came out on consoles, or T.V. Playable/compatible games, such as Pacman.
The problem is that this analogy falls apart when you compare that a lot of micro-transactions in modern games are on games with full price tags. This is on top of games that have loot boxes, pay to win mechanics, blatantly day one dlc locked content that isn’t released for 6+ months.
And I remember back in the day how everyone hated the arcade games that blatantly sucked quarters in the most cheap and unfair way possible. And people griped about it then too. It’s not a new thing and it’s gotten even worse with things like modern games loaded with micro-transactions.
It’s easy to make this seem like unreasonable indignation when you’re mis-representing the argument. And even if you’re picking out only mobile games that are otherwise free that’s still not a valid comparison.
It’s important to remember that this new micro-transaction system has a lot in common with gambling machines, and plays on the exact same impulses and forms of instant gratification. Quite a few of these games are built around teasing you just enough to get you to pay more, to go for just one more loot box or upgrade pack, to encourage you to keep playing and trying for something better. That can easily play on people with poor impulse control, as well as children who don’t know better. Of course, not all freemium games are designed like this, but enough of them are, and they can be quite exploitative. South Park’s episode about freemium gaming really got to the heart of the matter, I’d recommend checking it out.
There is freemium, and there is Free to Play. FtP are those which are in the league of “The Battle Cats” in which extra bonuses can be obtained, but largely are to speed up a process that does not take long either way. Freemium are a wretched clan, whose trickery involves luring one in with simplicity and then punishing them with eternal agony for without payment they cannot proceed.
I’d make the point that the line between those two can be significantly blurred, as simply having a game structured around ‘accelerating’ certain aspects of it can incentivize purchasing, and some games can push that more heavily than others. Take, say, Dead Space 3, a AAA game that didn’t need any freemium aspects to it but had them shoved in by corporate mandate. In addition to its host of issues, it had microtransactions to accelerate resource gathering– something that shouldn’t be in a goddamn horror action game to begin with– that could severely unbalance the game if you threw more money at it. You can try to ignore these aspects, but the game itself was structured to compel you to spend just a little bit more to get that edge. There were a lot of games in that dark age towards the start of the decade that went the freemium route, as well as the on-disc DLC/day one DLC route, and we’re still recovering from it. Dead Space and Mass Effect are especially heartbreaking examples of this.
The GaMERCaT group NEEDS TO PLAY THE BATTLE CATS! SURE THE GAME isn’t perfect and could be a bit more child friendly, but it would be so dang funny and meta,I would fall apart. Also these have been the most insightful comments I have read in a long time.
Someone played on this point a little but I think you have to remember that Arcade games were owned by someone else who had to pay for utilities and maintenance, while some games were quarter eaters, for the most part you got a turn to play for a dollar or less. Console games, before DLC, were great because you payed one time for the console and for each complete game. Now you pay a lot of money for the consoles (include phones here) you pay for internet, you may pay for the game and on top of that you pay to keep playing in most cases. It is not the same thing as an arcade game.
I’ve thought about the idea of a game emulating arcades by using micro-transactions for YEARS, but I always wound up thinking “no, that will never fly. People will never go for that.”
Those are not the same. Arcades gave you the whole game, which you didn’t have to buy. It was sorta like renting. DLC and micro-transactions are having to pay money towards a game you already paid for.
umm… anyone know who bill cypher is, cause i have no clue is he’s good or not, and he’s just floating outside my door (i know who he really is, just role play).
I gotta say, Final Fantasy Record Keeper has got to be one of the kindest mobile games I’ve played with regards to microtransactions. It has em, in the form of “Gems”, but it never once slaps you in the face with it. The game also just gives you the in-game equivalence to the transaction money, in the form of Mythril, which can be earned by logging in (giving you one a day, giving two occasionally every few days), beating the “story” missions, every time the trade shop updates you can buy one for cheap, and the weekly events give you 10 as you clear them, plus up to 4 more if you can beat the difficult multiplayer raids. Not only that, but if they make a mistake in translation or with a bug/glitch, they’ll compensate anywhere from 1-3, to 10 depending on the severity of the bug. The game is VERY giving.
And the mythril/gems are spent to refill your stamina bar [uses 1 mythril] (yeah, it is one of those archtypes), restart a battle if you lose [uses 1, but gives you a stackable buff], increase inventory space [uses 1 but gives you 5 or more slots depending on where you use em], and do the Relic Draws which give you Soul Breaks (ala Limit Breaks) for the various characters of the Final Fantasy universe [Can use 5 mythril for 1x item draw; 15 mythril for a 3x draw; or 50 mythril for a 11x draw that guarantees a good item].
I’ve been playing for a year or two, never spent a dime, having a ton of fun with it (made more fun by the multiplayer Raid aspect), and loving the complexity of the game.
This would almost be an advertisement if I was actually getting paid for it.
84 thoughts on “Microlessons”
Sexy Lizardman
Wow way to make some of us either feel really old for remembering those days… or really young for not lol
Ninsega21
I kinda remember those days. I remember seeing only 2 arcades. But the games were really good, and I actuaully beat a few.
Kirbyshade
I never really got to experience a true arcade before. . . My mom also didn’t like spending quarters on the machines I’ve actually gotten to see. XD
A GUY
(=ↀωↀ=) #jemoticons and also arcades rok peeps i luv timw crisis games and shootrs thaey rockkkkkkkk
Sammy the Gaming Wolf Girl
This is why I prefer PC games that only cost virtual money for upgrades, games like Roblox, League of Legends, Animal Jam, Fnaf and the overlord of gaming, MINECRAFT!!!!
Speaking of these games, when are we going to see some comics on these games?
Gggg
Lol gamers face on the first pannal
Tyler Furrison
Roblox makes you pay money for Robux, Tix was dropped years ago
AnimeCat
Ha! Lol
Bilateralrope
With arcade games, you knew exactly what you were getting when you put money in the machine. With lootboxes you don’t, you just have to gamble that they will drop what you want.
As far as I’m concerned, the good days of gaming are the days between the demise of arcades and the rise of microtransactions. When the gameplay wasn’t compromised in order to squeeze more money out of players.
ItzMeDB
These are the days I was born into and grew up in. Between arcades and before touch screens.
Kirby
To be fair, it did still exist then, it was just less transparent.
Certain games were made unreasonably harder on purpose as the age of “rental” started, so that the game would be more difficult and you’d have to have it for an additional rental period. The Lion King game is the main one I know about, but I’m sure others existed, and numerous other ways marketing departments worked to squeeze a few extra dimes out of us.
raven0ak
with arcade amount of entertainment you got on dollar per hour ratio depended of you skill, with todays lootboxes amount of entertainment you get depends on how wide your wallet is
nobody
arcades were cheaper in credits spent to beat them than buying a game if you weren’t completely hopeless at a game
Classic Steve
I was going to say: You basically RENTED arcade games for cheap. When I buy, I want the up-front purchase to be the end of it.
Then again, I suppose they’d charge more for that. This way I save money by not buying what doesn’t sufficiently interest me.
Porsupah
Thankfully, quite a few freemium titles are surprisingly well balanced in that regard, so there’s not even any waiting (or very little) involved, as with Sailor Moon Drops, or the late, lamented MLP: Puzzle Party – money there will simply help things on a bit.
That said, the best titles do, mostly, seem to remain paid-only, even if that can get expensive – last week saw the iOS releases of Phoenix Wright: Spirit of Justice, The Witness, and The Journey Down: Chapter 3.
Bilateralrope
When you’re saying that paid-only titles can get expensive, what kind of prices are you talking about ?
My frame of reference is PC Gaming. I’m curious about iOS game pricing.
Kirbyshade
It really depends, some ios games let you try out a part of it before purchase, others it’s right up front, these are usually between 2-5$ but freemiums, the microtransactions are anywhere between 1$ at the cheapest and with the least returns and 50$ with (imho) way more than you need… but I’m mostly a pc gamer and Nintendo fan, so I may not be the most reliable on this.
Kirbyshade
I just realized I forgot to mention that the big name ios games (like Final Fantasy Tactics) can be between 5-20$ much like oc games… but on your phone, in the middle of anywhere!
HamCat
FFT!!! :D
I am eagerly awaiting a relative to give me FFTA2 for a holiday because I’m too lazy.
It’s simple really:
1. Steal everyone’s stuff
2. Train as Hunter/Paladin (and there’s a samurai like class that is even better than hunter I think, but hunter has sonic boom which is ranged AoE)
3. …Still here? *Sonic BOOM*
OR
1. Steal Everyone’s stuff
2. Max out assassin speed
3. Get concentrate
4. LAST
5. BREATH
6. KO 95% ACCURACY
Faerthingale
Wait, Pony Puzzle Party is dead?? I love that game… it still runs on my phone. Does that mean support is just dead? So much for reporting glitches (not the cat, that’s someone else’s problem). But you’re right, it was really well-balanced about the micros.
anon
The biggest difference between arcade games and micro-transactions is that with micro-transactions you’ve generally already shelled out twenty to sixty dollars *buying* the game, where the arcade games are not owned by you and you are only paying to play it at that point in time. As Jim Stirling puts it, micro-transactions are usually part of a fee2pay model, that would make arcades fee2play.
Mahskie
Well, In many ways you’re right in that comparison, but I feel the idea of having that type of “Pay-to-continue” right on your phone or somewhere like that is kind of worrying, as to arcades where its only available when you actually go there, and as a result can’t really be exploited to have children steal from their parents as easily.
Nice comic tho! Made me think!
ROJO Y NARANJA
PIXEL HAS A GOOD POINT, BUT TO BE FAIR YOU DON’T BUY THE ARCADE GAMES, THAT’S WHY THEY MAKE YOU SPEND COINS ON THEM, UNLIKE THE CONSOLE GAMES THAT YOU ACTUALLY BOUGHT, THE FREEMIUM GAMES ARE GAMES THAT YOU ALREADY OWN, & IT SEEMS THAT THEY CHARGE YOU MORE MONEY THAT THE ARCADES DID BACK THEN
ROJO Y NARANJA
& BESIDES IT SEEMS THAT SOME FREEMIUM GAMES CHARGE YOU MUCH MORE MONEY THAT MANY CONSOLE GAMES
ROJO Y NARANJA
SORRY FOR THE TRIPLE POST BUT I FORGOT ANOTHER THING, THE FREEMIUM GAMES ONLY GIVE YOU LIMITED CONTENT WHEN YOU UPLOAD THEM, SO YOU HAVE TO PAY TO UNLOCK THE REST OF THE GAME, THE ARCADES ARE ALREADY COMPLETE GAMES WHICH YOU CAN FINISH ENTIRELY WITH ONLY ONE QUARTER IF YOU ARE GOOD ENOUGH
Preaction
It’s cute that you believe that arcade games will allow you to win with a single credit.
HamCat
They do.
But you need to have skill on par with the masters.
Or something
ROJO Y NARANJA
EXACTLY!
Ninsega21
STOP FRIGGING TYPING IN ALL CAPS!
Ninsega21
IT’S FRIGGING ANOYING!
RiftWalker
Rojo, you may want to have your Caps Lock key checked. I think it may be stuck.
And this does make me feel pretty old since I was born in the time before the Atari 2600 so I’ve lived through the arcade days and the F2P phone/tablet games. Also I love Pixel’s expressions, they’re always so emotive.
Snocone
Rojo has intentionally written in all caps on Gamercat posts for years now. We’ve all asked him/her to stop repeatedly, to no avail.
HamCat
I think they do it as a shtick. They aren’t trying to defy anything or be rude, just accent their work I guess. On the other hand, Rojo y Naranja means “Red and Orange” in spanish. A certain comic has a character that is associated with red and types in all caps. Coincidence? Maybe.
Kikinaak
I’m with gamer on this one. She may be right, but damnit, thats hitting below the belt.
You are not supposed to go scratching the lenses of nostalgia goggles.
ANONYMOUS STRANGER
Oi! I prefer you don’t do any of that…
Animegx43
The evil of paying so that you can keep on dying in a game.
codenamealphaj
I feel the same way.
Ninsega21
No one called first yet, so
FFFFFFIIIIIIIIRRRST!
HamCat
Are you happy now?
Would you like some turtle soup?
YoKaiShoubiao
Congratsulations!
YOU is da winner!
You really were the FIRST PERSON TO POST HERE!
I like trains
He was the second
Ninsega21
Derp. ‘• ‘_’ •’
Ninsega21
I made a pikachu! Cookoo
Ninsega21
Really tho, on a scale of 1-10, how good is my pikachu?
Kogarashi
This is why I feel the best freemium/free2play games are the ones where you get the base game for free (or a small nominal sum), and if you’re willing to wait out refill times and the like, you can continue playing for free, while real-world money spent will get you bonuses like more playtime right now (instead of later when your playtime meter refills on its own), or neat loot (that may be available for free but in exchange for a slow grind), or something similar that can maybe give you an edge or better enjoyment but isn’t necessary to play the game.
The worst offender I’ve played quickly escalated to a point where one could go DAYS just collecting coins and waiting to amass enough to actually do anything else BUT collect coins. Not only that, but you couldn’t just leave it sitting for those few days for the coins to accumulate. You had to log in every HOUR to manually collect them. It was seriously unfun, and the only way to escalate anything by that point was to spend real-world money on an exponential scale. Almost every other initially-free game I’ve played on mobile had similar speed-up play-more options, but were still fundamentally playable without that.
I agree with others who say that if I’ve already paid a decent base cost for the game then I do NOT want to be forced into microtransactions to continue my enjoyment of said game. Microtransactions should, in my opinion, be limited to games that are either free for the base version, or have a very small base cost.
ColdFusion
Slight difference. If you bought the arcade game, you could play it for free. Of course they’re giving the game away for free so that SORT OF makes up for it. Basically they’re trying to BE the arcade machine owner without actually doing any more work than the arcade machine creator.
Daemoroth
Except you didn’t pay $100 before you were allowed to start playing an arcade game. And when you dropped a quarter the outcome wasn’t random, with a bunch of trash and a tiny chance of getting what you actually wanted.
There are games with good MT practices, but they are becoming rare.
Arcades and modern MTs are not comparable.
Kitty
You know, when you really look at it, Pixel missed one thing about the arcade games. Either way, when you’re playing the games, you’re spending one of two (if not both) valuable things: money and time. While modern mobile games have both options, you can either make in game purchases, or wait for whatever it is you need, most often lives, to refill. While with arcade games, you’re spending both your money and your time which, by comparison, commits the bigger crime. They were generally better games to begin with, however, and a lot of them came out on consoles, or T.V. Playable/compatible games, such as Pacman.
Ash
The problem is that this analogy falls apart when you compare that a lot of micro-transactions in modern games are on games with full price tags. This is on top of games that have loot boxes, pay to win mechanics, blatantly day one dlc locked content that isn’t released for 6+ months.
And I remember back in the day how everyone hated the arcade games that blatantly sucked quarters in the most cheap and unfair way possible. And people griped about it then too. It’s not a new thing and it’s gotten even worse with things like modern games loaded with micro-transactions.
It’s easy to make this seem like unreasonable indignation when you’re mis-representing the argument. And even if you’re picking out only mobile games that are otherwise free that’s still not a valid comparison.
zant
EA Dungeon Keepers: research from there
nuff said
Imperator
It’s important to remember that this new micro-transaction system has a lot in common with gambling machines, and plays on the exact same impulses and forms of instant gratification. Quite a few of these games are built around teasing you just enough to get you to pay more, to go for just one more loot box or upgrade pack, to encourage you to keep playing and trying for something better. That can easily play on people with poor impulse control, as well as children who don’t know better. Of course, not all freemium games are designed like this, but enough of them are, and they can be quite exploitative. South Park’s episode about freemium gaming really got to the heart of the matter, I’d recommend checking it out.
HamCat
There is freemium, and there is Free to Play. FtP are those which are in the league of “The Battle Cats” in which extra bonuses can be obtained, but largely are to speed up a process that does not take long either way. Freemium are a wretched clan, whose trickery involves luring one in with simplicity and then punishing them with eternal agony for without payment they cannot proceed.
Imperator
I’d make the point that the line between those two can be significantly blurred, as simply having a game structured around ‘accelerating’ certain aspects of it can incentivize purchasing, and some games can push that more heavily than others. Take, say, Dead Space 3, a AAA game that didn’t need any freemium aspects to it but had them shoved in by corporate mandate. In addition to its host of issues, it had microtransactions to accelerate resource gathering– something that shouldn’t be in a goddamn horror action game to begin with– that could severely unbalance the game if you threw more money at it. You can try to ignore these aspects, but the game itself was structured to compel you to spend just a little bit more to get that edge. There were a lot of games in that dark age towards the start of the decade that went the freemium route, as well as the on-disc DLC/day one DLC route, and we’re still recovering from it. Dead Space and Mass Effect are especially heartbreaking examples of this.
codenamealphaj
The GaMERCaT group NEEDS TO PLAY THE BATTLE CATS! SURE THE GAME isn’t perfect and could be a bit more child friendly, but it would be so dang funny and meta,I would fall apart. Also these have been the most insightful comments I have read in a long time.
CyberDragon
Wait… how old is GaMERCat? He must be really old for a cat if he remembers when arcades were a thing.
HamCat
Not necessarily, he might just be quite young but have simply grown up near an arcade, then watched it close.
princessa rosita
omfg i know him from like a sticker in messager
Teh GaMERCaT
HEEEEEEYYYY, I have his entire sticker pack! They’re also compatible with Facebook too!
Red X-23
This is me in a later life.
Keybolt
Someone played on this point a little but I think you have to remember that Arcade games were owned by someone else who had to pay for utilities and maintenance, while some games were quarter eaters, for the most part you got a turn to play for a dollar or less. Console games, before DLC, were great because you payed one time for the console and for each complete game. Now you pay a lot of money for the consoles (include phones here) you pay for internet, you may pay for the game and on top of that you pay to keep playing in most cases. It is not the same thing as an arcade game.
Marscaleb
I’ve thought about the idea of a game emulating arcades by using micro-transactions for YEARS, but I always wound up thinking “no, that will never fly. People will never go for that.”
I like trains
I usually don’t buy stuff in mobile games, because I like to actually earn it.
I like trains
Also GC should try Minecraft or Terraria
yukovalis
Those are not the same. Arcades gave you the whole game, which you didn’t have to buy. It was sorta like renting. DLC and micro-transactions are having to pay money towards a game you already paid for.
Kikinaak
Is Pixel Trolling like an Egyptian?
I like trains
Pixel, are those Doritos? GIMME SOME.
codenamealphaj
You mean Bill Cipher chips?
sans
umm… anyone know who bill cypher is, cause i have no clue is he’s good or not, and he’s just floating outside my door (i know who he really is, just role play).
ChaosSorceror_Davidicus
I gotta say, Final Fantasy Record Keeper has got to be one of the kindest mobile games I’ve played with regards to microtransactions. It has em, in the form of “Gems”, but it never once slaps you in the face with it. The game also just gives you the in-game equivalence to the transaction money, in the form of Mythril, which can be earned by logging in (giving you one a day, giving two occasionally every few days), beating the “story” missions, every time the trade shop updates you can buy one for cheap, and the weekly events give you 10 as you clear them, plus up to 4 more if you can beat the difficult multiplayer raids. Not only that, but if they make a mistake in translation or with a bug/glitch, they’ll compensate anywhere from 1-3, to 10 depending on the severity of the bug. The game is VERY giving.
And the mythril/gems are spent to refill your stamina bar [uses 1 mythril] (yeah, it is one of those archtypes), restart a battle if you lose [uses 1, but gives you a stackable buff], increase inventory space [uses 1 but gives you 5 or more slots depending on where you use em], and do the Relic Draws which give you Soul Breaks (ala Limit Breaks) for the various characters of the Final Fantasy universe [Can use 5 mythril for 1x item draw; 15 mythril for a 3x draw; or 50 mythril for a 11x draw that guarantees a good item].
I’ve been playing for a year or two, never spent a dime, having a ton of fun with it (made more fun by the multiplayer Raid aspect), and loving the complexity of the game.
This would almost be an advertisement if I was actually getting paid for it.
codenamealphaj
Wow long comment.
NinjaBrine55
I think gamercat should play cuphead who agrees
Meamoi
Those were dark days. They should not be returned to.