Are all games going to become p2w?

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xnikx

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Oct 25, 2006
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Ok, we all know free to play games are all pay to win.
ive been playing black light retribution and its a great game, its not very pay to win but you can only unlock certain items with real money. which some of these items do make your weapon stronger, such as incendiary ammo.
and even the items that dont require real money takes hours to afford with in game currency.

diablo 3 quickly became a pay to win game, which is why i quit.
i mainly wanted the pvp but realized im just going to get owned by kids who spend their real money on items.

a game i was looking forward to is the new plants vs zomibes garden warfare.
seen an ad on origin today with the preorder deluxe addition.
which includes this
50,000 In-game Coins

Even bf4 is taking a page out of tf2's book with the battlepacks, which i guarantee will require real money to open them. atleast the gold battlepacks will require real money.

cs:go recently brought in the arms deal, which as of right now is only skins so its not really p2w, But im sure eventually new weapons will be introduced and required keys to open the "cases" that contain them.
im also betting that cs go will become free to play, just like tf2.

gaming is really taking a turn for the worst. and as a hardcore gamer my whole life, im really beginning to lose interest in video games.
people are spending more money on in game content they spent on the game itself.

what are your guys thoughts?
 
Falling Anvil said:
A good subscription MMO would likely alleviate most of those concerns. Probably.
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eh, im not really an mmo gamer. more fps.

but this has just been going through my head with all the f2p games and all just about every game having micro transactions.
 
i think it will take the industry some time to work out a compromise and figure out what can make the most money. I don't think things worked out to well with Diablo II, hopefully others learn from it. Otherwise rouge servers will become more popular.
 
Well, many FPSs are coming out with the Preorder buys you xp bonuses + early unlocks. I'd consider that p2w. I really think it's mainly action games and adventure games, in which it's either pure skill or pure intellect will soon be not pay to win, as advantages defeat the purpose of those games (despite people using FAQs).

Honestly, I think this is due to games really being poorly designed in the past 2 decades in which few people actually play them to the finish. It's one of the reasons the 40 hour game is a myth and actually bad for the industry as a whole. We claim we want long games, but the reality is most of us don't actually play the game that long. If a game can be beaten, it should be beaten, and if not, there's a massive flaw in the game design. I don't care if it's Final Fantasy 99 which takes 500+ hours to defeat legitimately. If you only play 5 hours, you paid your money for 5 hours of entertainment.

The P2W approach lately is designed to shorten the gameplay for those of us with more money than time, but it's just a bandage to cover up a hemorrhage of bad gameplay.
 
Dota 2 is doing it right. Their store has thousands of items for real money sale, not one of them increases your in game performance / strength / etc.
 
Nytegard said:
The P2W approach lately is designed to shorten the gameplay for those of us with more money than time, but it's just a bandage to cover up a hemorrhage of bad gameplay.
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That's not pay to win, that's pay to not grind. It's a fine approach for F2P games.
 
AceCR42 said:
That's not pay to win, that's pay to not grind. It's a fine approach for F2P games.
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But it no longer applies to f2p anymore it's happening in more retail games. Specifically EA games.

I've noticed that the progression in multiplayer retail games has been getting absurd to the point of stopping you from enjoying all of the content. You're essentially getting locked out but for some reason people are willing to accept it as long as the experience remains balanced, which is total bullsh!t.

It's not like you can't see what is really going on here with instant unlock packs being released after game is out. This will soon be standard the quo and more likely going to get worse.
 
yourgrandma said:
It's not like you can't see what is really going on here with instant unlock packs being released after game is out. This will soon be standard the quo and more likely going to get worse.
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this i dont mind so much
its not necessarily p2w, for instance in bf3.
if your a noob and like the jet, the the unlock pack will be helpful because you wont be able to compete with someone else who has all the jet unlocks.

a great example of p2w, is tribes ascend.
to unlock a weapon without using money you have to play for DAYS.

for me, i refuse to use micro transactions, i will just quit because i get sick of using the same guns the entire game. and honestly your almost stuck with this one weapon unless you spend your real money.
i quit d3 the day the rmah came out because i realized the whole game is towards forcing you to spend your real money.

i could understand f2p games charging for cosmetics such as character and gun camos but to offer a gun that demolishes everyone who doesnt have it is ridiculous and just discourages me, and im sure others, from playing.

i just checked out the marketplace for cs:go, and their are knife camos going for $325!
a skin for a knife cost almost as much as my monthly car payment.
 
Starcraft 2 ladder, no amount of money will ever earn you masters league. Even badly spent time could keep you out of diamond leagues, you can't even grind to win.

Pay to win is no different than grind to win. If you're looking at real competitive games, mindless grinding should give you no advantage over not grinding. Practice and skill is what makes you win.

Many games mentioned so far have a pvp element, but I don't consider them competitive if money or time (you can buy leveling services for those games just as easily as items) make you stronger or give you an advantage. I consider them pay2have fun or grind2havefun. Some people enjoy the grind, others like to get to endgame faster. Normally I don't put money in these micro transactions because I have fun grinding in the games I play, but I don't care if there are people who pay that stuff.
 
Stat based games that have PVP are often crap when you go back and think about it. Fair games allow you to reach parity relatively quickly but you see systems where you have to grind hours and days to get anywhere close to other people who started playing earlier and paid more.
 
I think there are differences in single player free games vs multi-player ... the pay to win option might be more prevalent in multi-player ... single player games generally seem more focused on "pay to win quickly" ... the SP games generally just make the game so hard that you must either devote long times and do lots of repetitive grinding or buy shortcuts (you can usually win without them but it might take a LONG time) ;)
 
Who cares? P2W is fine. If someone wants to spend money to get ahead, whatever. As long as you can reach similar levels without paying it doesn't matter. Some people have more time than money, but many people playing games probably have more money than time.
 
I agree. I'm not enjoying all the extra things they try to scam out of you. Sims is another example. They are constantly coming out with expansions and the like, but are still making content they sell on their site. You have to keep buying points to enjoy new stuff and with sims if you don't have new stuff you're going to be bored...
 
big_aug said:
Who cares? P2W is fine. If someone wants to spend money to get ahead, whatever. As long as you can reach similar levels without paying it doesn't matter. Some people have more time than money, but many people playing games probably have more money than time.
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By that definition though, F2P is good, in that you can catch up to a person who pays money if you're willing to put in 2500 hours.

I know this is a couple years old, but:

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/...-only-10-percent-of-players-finish-games.aspx

In the article, author Blake Snow quotes Activision production contractor Keith Fuller, who says, "What I've been told as a blanket expectation is that 90 percent of players who start your game will never see the end of it unless they watch a clip on YouTube."

John Lee, VP of marketing at Raptr and formerly of Capcom, THQ, and Sega, says that "bounce rates" (players that quit a game before completion) have risen in recent years. "Just 10 years ago, I recall some standard that only 20% of gamers ever finish a game," says Lee.
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How many of you know people who played Super Mario Bros. when it was released and didn't beat it? I'm willing to bet most people did. We're not talking Battle Toads difficulty here, where that's understandable. But modern games typically at least present a difficulty easier than SMB, which itself was easy, yet only 10% of people beat modern games? To me, this is a fundamental design problem in modern games.

What I'd rather have is a game that a majority of people will beat without paying money. At that point, fine, I don't mind if someone else wants to spend cash. But the fact of the matter is that games now have a low completion rate, and are using a P2W scheme to compensate for their design failures.
 
All games will become pay to win if we allow it. The market so far has dictated that pay to win works. So you are seeing more and more. The only way to change this is to stop purchasing and let the market adjust.
 
xnikx said:
Ok, we all know free to play games are all pay to win.
..
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One can rarely make an inclusive broad statement without flaws.

The biggest most popular F2P game is League of Legends.

Would you classify that as "pay 2 win"?

If you think LOL is p2w, you are sorely mistaken. A good player can kick my ass with pretty much any weekly free champ, and it doesn't matter how much money I pay.

The Runes only give you so much of a bonus. Skins do not help you win.

You said you like PVP, go play some LOL. It is NOT p2w. My little brother is a Platinum IV solo player, and he hasn't paid anything. He has most of the champs and a butt ton of runes. He is a FAR more skilled player than I and can beat me any day, and he hasn't paid any money. I have paid somewhere around $40 for LOL.
 
Never been huge on any F2P game... however that might change soon.

I hear the new Command & Conquer Generals 2 game is going to be free to play. Which both scares me and intrigues me.

As a huge C&C fan - I have no problem paying 50 or 60 bucks for the game. Now that it's free, I see nothing wrong with springing for 30 or 40 dollars worth of real money upgrades if it makes the game more enjoyable.

I can easily see though -- with what it sounds like they have planned EA will be milking the hell out of this play model. Endless packs/perks/weapons/units that all cost just a little bit, not enough to care about when dragged out over a year or two. It's been proven in many other systems, people feel "okay" about spending 120 dollars over the course of 1 or 2 years, vs spending $60 all at once up front.

We all have our vices - and compared to some other people's spending habits, even if I did blow 100+ dollars on one of these games I'd still be getting off relatively cheap compared to other people who are into (guns/cars/drugs) haha funny enough I'm VERY into guns/cars, just not making the same money I used to.
 
xnikx said:
Ok, we all know free to play games are all pay to win.
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Quake Live isn't p2w. Their Pro paid offering provides actual value by letting you spawn a server pretty much anywhere in the world, and anytime you want.

xnikx said:
this i dont mind so much
its not necessarily p2w, for instance in bf3.
if your a noob and like the jet, the the unlock pack will be helpful because you wont be able to compete with someone else who has all the jet unlocks.

a great example of p2w, is tribes ascend.
to unlock a weapon without using money you have to play for DAYS.
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facepalm

You're praising a paid "solution" to a made up problem. Why should anyone have to pay for unobstructed access to the content they already paid for? BF3 isn't free. What a load of crap.
 
swtor lost a lot of luster f2p. I still subscribe and it's great, just too limited on f2p.
 
xnikx said:
Even bf4 is taking a page out of tf2's book with the battlepacks, which i guarantee will require real money to open them.
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this is COMPLETELY FALSE. The battlepacks can be obtained via points in the game exactly like in Mass Effect 3.
 
Liqq said:
this is COMPLETELY FALSE. The battlepacks can be obtained via points in the game exactly like in Mass Effect 3.
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Same thing to me. Too many games are essentially becoming a f2p game behind a paywall.
 
Liqq said:
this is COMPLETELY FALSE. The battlepacks can be obtained via points in the game exactly like in Mass Effect 3.
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And the points can also be bought. Rich people ruin gaming.. fact.
 
i have been playing video games of all kinds for over 25 years, i REFUSE to even consider playing any F2P game after my experience in lotro, it IS the BANE of any good game PERIOD over time you will all learn. if it means i no longer play games because they are all F2P then so be it i hope all these giant corps that make these games now CHOKE on this crap as the industry fails sooner or later
 
RM_Bulldog said:
i have been playing video games of all kinds for over 25 years, i REFUSE to even consider playing any F2P game after my experience in lotro, it IS the BANE of any good game PERIOD over time you will all learn. if it means i no longer play games because they are all F2P then so be it i hope all these giant corps that make these games now CHOKE on this crap as the industry fails sooner or later
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The problem here is that the same thing was said about DLC, and I'm sure about other things. F2P is the future for major studios, and sadly, we the fans brought it on ourselves.
 
dgz said:
Quake Live isn't p2w. Their Pro paid offering provides actual value by letting you spawn a server pretty much anywhere in the world, and anytime you want.

facepalm

You're praising a paid "solution" to a made up problem. Why should anyone have to pay for unobstructed access to the content they already paid for? BF3 isn't free. What a load of crap.
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did i say i agreed with it? no, i said its not really an issue.
if noobs want to pay to be on the same level as all the other players, that is much different then a player with 100+ hours being a able to use his real money and buy an op weapon.
a noob who pays to unlock all the jet upgrades will be able to beat a pilot with hundreds of hours who didnt pay for the upgrade?
no but at least they have a better chance. this doesnt factor into p2w, this just factors into noobs wasting their money.

say the m16a3 could only be unlocked if you paid money for it, or other wise have to play hundreds of hours to have enough in game points to purchase it, that is PAY TO WIN.
or say you can only get heat seakers/rocket pods if you paids $10 a piece, or have to spend hundreds of hours to earn enough in game points to get them. again, pay to win.

and these upgrade packs are not what started the problem. dlc in the form of new maps or even a paid patch is what started this problem.

and im not saying every single f2p game is p2w. quake live, lol, and dota 2 are not p2w. lol and dota 2 make their money from offering skins, which is the right way to go.
 
How is playing for days to get jet unlocks in BF3 any different from playing for days to get a weapon in Tribes Ascend?
 
I don't think all games will be P2W or F2P, or as we need to call it S2BF sucks to be free. But I think many will adopt these and probably almost all the big popular ones. BTW OP you should call it S2BF because if you say P2W, it wont matter what game it is you pick some clown will come in and say LOL UR LAME. Then you will end up in this huge argument about what exactly is the definition of P2W so all you do is make up your own definition then they can shove it. I think your point is valid, there are a ton of very negative things that are coming out of this new S2BF movement. Some of them are the P2W aspects, others are the outrageous pricing schemes and others are just the general unfun factor of needing to choose between dumping stupid amounts of money into a game or doing things that are not what you most want to do in the game. It really never bothers me that totally free players get screwed the problem is that its a gradient of screwing you which means that the people in the middle who pay a little money are the ones that are seeing a significantly degraded game experience.

Its all the same thing, different companies tweak it in different ways but what it ultimately comes down to is they have to make it SUCK to play the game without paying for most people. And only a VERY few games out there who are mega hits with millions of players can afford to actually make the game not too bad.

Now do I have a problem with it? Absolutely. Can it be done to an acceptable level, sure. The way I like a game is something like tribes ascend ended up being, the problem is it should have started that way. You pay a set price to own the game (currently $30) and with that everything is unlocked except cosmetics. This allows the company to get people into the game in a sort of demo mode where not everything is unlocked and if they wish to spend 2000 hours unlocking everything they can. BF premium is like this too.

But that said its still full of problems, how does a company like EA really justify charging $60 for a new game and then another $40 for premium.

Also I will argue that F2P = P2W if you take the average of all games that is true. When ever people try to come up with counter examples they find that 1, their are very few, 2 almost all of them fall into 2 catagories. They are massive IE have so many people that they can use economies of scale to get away with it, and 2 they are likely graphically lame games and often games that are just strait up used to be paid game that are no old and have gone free. None of these examples show us a way the average F2P game can comfortably exist without a P2W element.
The problem is game companies need to make money and keep revenue coming in and ultimately the consumers dictates how that happens. S2BF is actually our own fault, because everytime a company tried to release games every year, we rejected it. Every time companies tried to do subscriptions, we rejected it. So companies kept trying different things and ultimately they figured out that consumers are pretty stupid and S2BF was the best way to trick them into thinking it was OK and keep a revenue stream coming into a game. And the best part is that you could finally really start pushing consumers into different price brackets, something that had escaped the gaming industry before. Now you can have your sucker that dumps several hundreds to thousands of dollars into a game and at the very same time keep your numbers up with the cheap skates that play for free as well as having everything in between.

BTW for me the thing that I HATE the most about it is the companies desire to control everything and take the community out of it. Then their are all sorts of problems that in old games would have been fixed in no time by the community. For instance in tribes ascend servers were limited, normally in a game people just go rent a server anywhere they want, but no, not in S2BF, you have to deal with their shit servers for life. And there is not a single thing you can do about it at all no matter how much money you have, that is the irony.
 
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This is a pretty interesting thread.

I think this issue kind of came to a head for me with Diablo 3. It wasn't until after I bought the game that I realized that gameplay was playing second fiddle to the almighty grind. I am happy to compensate developers for their efforts (I am a software developer myself!), but I won't participate in anything resembling the RMAH.

For me, the golden age of gaming was the early 2000's with games like Counter-Strike, Soldier of Fortune 2, Call of Duty 1, and the like. In these games:
  • Everyone paid a flat entry fee to get the game.
  • Everyone had the same set of items to play the game with.
I have long thought that BF3 would be the perfect FPS if there were no ranks, no unlocks, and no stat-tracking of any kind. I recognize that this is wishful thinking on my part; unfortunately, these elements are here to stay, for better or for worse. I think a realistic compromise would be to alter the unlocks so that you either unlock items through the grind, or you pay a FLAT FEE for ALL past, present, and future unlocks.

In my opinion, grinding is a cancer to gaming that ought to be eradicated ASAP.
  • I don't have time to grind for items and/or unlocks.
  • Even if I did have the time, my brain is not wired for extended gaming sessions. I have a full-time job, a wife, and a mortgage. 2x 90-minute gaming sessions constitutes a marathon gaming day for me.
  • Even if I did have the game, and my brain was wired for extended gaming, grinding is not actually fun. We get tricked into thinking that it's fun because it stimulates the reward centers in our brain. This is known in academic circles as "addiction". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction)
I can think of at least one exception where a very limited and controlled amount of grind acts in service of the gameplay, and that is Far Cry 3.

For me personally, F2P, P2W, microtransactions, and grinding are getting so out of hand that I'll probably cut multiplayer games out of my diet altogether. After all, there are still plenty of whole-grain games out there like Far Cry 3, Tomb Raider and Bioshock: Infinite.
 
Killa|3yte said:
I have long thought that BF3 would be the perfect FPS if there were no ranks, no unlocks, and no stat-tracking of any kind. I recognize that this is wishful thinking on my part; unfortunately, these elements are here to stay, for better or for worse.
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I personally don't have a huge issue with an unlock system in games, my problem with the BF3 system for unlocks is that it was genuinely slow and grindy. I know the COD series is generally hated around here, but IMO, COD4 had the perfect unlock system. There wasn't really much of an advantage to having unlocked everything and unlocks occurred at a good steady pace up until some of the later ones (which were mostly visual rather than game changing anyway). Space Marine had an ok unlock system, things came at a good pace, the downside was that you were genuinely at a disadvantage until you had unlocked certain things (somewhat countered by the fact you could copy the loadout of the person that killed you, but that still places you at a disadvantage).
In my opinion, grinding is a cancer to gaming that ought to be eradicated ASAP.
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I agree that grinding is shit, but I think it's a mistake to lump "unlocks" and "grind" in the same boat, a well balanced unlock system, IMO, is a good thing. One problem is when an unlock system clashes with a pay system, THAT, IMO, is a cancer. There's no way you can have a well balanced unlock system with a pay system, they are contradictory. A well balanced unlock system encourages you to get the unlocks yourself because it's FUN to do, a pay system encourages you to pay because it's a pain in the ARSE to unlock things manually.

Even if I did have the game, and my brain was wired for extended gaming, grinding is not actually fun. We get tricked into thinking that it's fun because it stimulates the reward centers in our brain. This is known in academic circles as "addiction". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction)
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It's just your brain tricking you in to thinking it's enjoyable? Err, doesn't that mean it's fun? :p I'm pretty sure you could argue that video gaming as a whole is just tricking your brain in to thinking something is fun.

IMO, some people can have fun just by playing a game for hundreds of hours with no progression, no rewards, no advancing forward. There's a plethora of people (I'd argue most people) who will enjoy a couple of games like that for a few minutes before realising "hrm, this isn't going anywhere". Hence, unlock systems (which can be good). Unfortunately what we have now is this weird combination of unlock systems and trying to make money off unlock systems... so you take something that was designed to improve the long term enjoyment of a game and then mix it with a system that inherently wants to make the unlocking painful to encourage you to pay, and you end up with what we are getting now.

It is one of the things that worries me in Star Citizen, I still don't see how a pay system and a GOOD unlock system can coexist.

A pay based unlock system inherently:
1. Makes unlocking painful/excessively time consuming as to encourage paying instead.
2. Places a monetary value on my time in the game. This is totally psychological, I know, but it affects my enjoyment none the less.

I personally think COD4 was an unlock/grind system done right... however it would never work as a pay system because it wasn't painful enough to unlock things :p
 
What is good about unlock systems? Nothing its a skinner box its a joke. It is only there to keep the dumbest of the population playing longer.

I wouldn't have a problem if the unlock system was completely voluntary. IE you choose at the start of the game, do you want to go down a progression path, or do you want to have it all right away.

I do agree that BF3 had one of the worst, not only was it somewhat grindy, the bigger problem was it was totally based on achieving certainly things IE kill a person X times with a weapons. Because of that it just increased cheating. If you aimbot you can unlock everything so fast its barely a grind. You don't even care which weapons you use. If you are a legit player it forces you to use shitty weapons, and sometimes work without the right tools for the game. In the end it makes pub experience worse because some percent of the players in every pub are either grinding some useless weapon that isn't what the team needs or cheating.
 
rudy said:
What is good about unlock systems? Nothing its a skinner box its a joke. It is only there to keep the dumbest of the population playing longer.
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Quite simple really... some people like to actually have a goal. For people who don't care if they have a goal, I can understand this is a hard concept to grasp. :p

I enjoyed my undergraduate course, if I wasn't getting a degree at the end of it, I probably wouldn't have pursued it that long, though. I enjoy driving my car, but I rarely just go for a drive for absolutely no reason, I'll find a diner or a theater or some reason to go take it for a drive. I enjoy my job, but if I wasn't getting paid for it, I probably wouldn't do it. I enjoy working on my car, but if it weren't for the fact it's improving it for the next time I take it for a drive, I probably wouldn't bother working on it.

I genuinely enjoyed the gameplay of COD4, but there's no way I would have played it as long as I did if it wasn't for the fact there were things to unlock. Sure, you can set your own goals, but IMO that's not nearly as fun. It's kind of like the difference between telling yourself "I bet I can climb that tree" and your friend telling you "I bet you CAN'T climb that tree". The latter is the one that's more likely to drive me to actually try it :p

I think the "get off my lawn" crowd struggles to comprehend that unlock systems can be a good thing if they're well paced because they make the game more enjoyable for a larger group of people.

The BF3 unlock system is the exact opposite of a good unlock system, I DID enjoy BF3 gameplay wise, but after 15 or so hours I was like "meh, I'm over this, too grindy".
 
Tudz said:
It's just your brain tricking you in to thinking it's enjoyable? Err, doesn't that mean it's fun? :p I'm pretty sure you could argue that video gaming as a whole is just tricking your brain in to thinking something is fun.
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Well, I think it's badly phrased, as it's not really your brain tricking you to think it's enjoyable, but your brain tricking you to play more for a reward. I can't tell you how often I saw in WoW people stating how much they hated the game, but continued to play for that next gear piece. It's the same with achievements. We as humans are programmed to grind.

As for unlock systems, I don't mind if achievements get you skins for a weapon, but to lock out guns is a big no no. I don't care if it's 100 hours of grinding or 10 minutes, I don't like it. I'm also not a big fan of how Counterstrike does things where you earn money, because this can put poor players at a disadvantage. Sure, after a few rounds they can purchase a better weapon, but it's still unfair. Games like Quake and Unreal Tournament are different in that sense, because everyone has access to all the weapons at the very beginning, but part of the skill to the game is learning the map to get to the weapons first.

Sure, bolt action rifles require a little more practice than say an mg, but a good game should be based on skill, and not who gets the better weapons faster.
 
Nytegard said:
Well, I think it's badly phrased, as it's not really your brain tricking you to think it's enjoyable, but your brain tricking you to play more for a reward. I can't tell you how often I saw in WoW people stating how much they hated the game, but continued to play for that next gear piece. It's the same with achievements. We as humans are programmed to grind.
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WoW and MMO's in general are a completely different category though. The whole game revolves around grinding... the actual gameplay is a pile of shit most the time.

I'm more referring to a game that does actually have good gameplay and then is either augmented or hindered by an unlock based system.

You say "humans are programmed to grind" and I kind of agree... which is why, when well implemented, it can be a good thing to include in a game. People naturally find enjoyment from doing a job and seeing it done and then moving on to the next job. It doesn't mean the job has to be painful, though. The problem with WoW and MMO's and shit like that, the grind is painful and time consuming and the reward is you made a number increment from a smaller value to a larger value... yay? It's like work but not fulfilling or enjoyable (granted I know there are some people who do find it genuinely enjoyable, the horrible mutants that they are :p).
As for unlock systems, I don't mind if achievements get you skins for a weapon, but to lock out guns is a big no no. I don't care if it's 100 hours of grinding or 10 minutes, I don't like it. I'm also not a big fan of how Counterstrike does things where you earn money, because this can put poor players at a disadvantage. Sure, after a few rounds they can purchase a better weapon, but it's still unfair. Games like Quake and Unreal Tournament are different in that sense, because everyone has access to all the weapons at the very beginning, but part of the skill to the game is learning the map to get to the weapons first.

Sure, bolt action rifles require a little more practice than say an mg, but a good game should be based on skill, and not who gets the better weapons faster.
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Different strokes for different folks. I totally understand the people who just want to get in there and have everything available from the beginning and hopefully we get enough games that cater to everyone's tastes. The bit I don't understand is when people get in to the "get off my lawn" syndrome and refuse to accept not all people think the way they do.
 
Tudz said:
I personally don't have a huge issue with an unlock system in games, my problem with the BF3 system for unlocks is that it was genuinely slow and grindy.
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Fair enough. Perhaps I was a bit hasty in calling for the total annihilation of unlocks. I do remember the unlock system for CoD4, and I agree, it WAS better. BF3 really left a sour taste in my mouth as the gameplay was REALLY good, but I saw the grind destroying a lot of the fun in various ways that have been covered in the last few posts.

Nytegard said:
Well, I think it's badly phrased, as it's not really your brain tricking you to think it's enjoyable, but your brain tricking you to play more for a reward. I can't tell you how often I saw in WoW people stating how much they hated the game, but continued to play for that next gear piece.
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Yes, I probably phrased this poorly. I think you hit the nail on the head though. Grinding has a way of turning games into jobs in exactly the way you've mentioned.

I think my real beef is that game developers have, in a misguided attempt to provide continuing progression to even the most hardcore players, crafted unlock systems that are insurmountable to a player such as myself with less time on my hands.
 
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