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And Xbox Live Marketplace/Namco Bandai hits a new low.
Drez
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Registered User regular
Has anyone read http://majornelson.com today or looked up new content on Xbox Live Marketplace lately? Particularly anyone that owns Tales of Vesperia?
WARNING: The descriptions (on Majornelson.com) of some of the stuff sold is spoilery. Minorly spoilery, but still spoilery.
Basically, they are selling a one-time gald and level pack. Yes, a +10 level boost for 300 Microsoft points. It doesn't matter that this is cheap. In fact, that makes it worse. I think even the existence of this kind of crap cheapens the game. They are also selling the skill sets and full recipe sets. Stupid.
I don't mean to sitewhore - the link to my gaming blog is in my sig - but I'll quote what I wrote there. It's just easier to quote that then rephrase it to post here:
Am I overreacting? I find this pretty stupid. I'm usually pretty lenient on this kind of thing. I didn't mind Oblivion's horse armor. I didn't see a big problem with EA's Battlefield gun thing. But this really bothers me.
WARNING: The descriptions (on Majornelson.com) of some of the stuff sold is spoilery. Minorly spoilery, but still spoilery.
Basically, they are selling a one-time gald and level pack. Yes, a +10 level boost for 300 Microsoft points. It doesn't matter that this is cheap. In fact, that makes it worse. I think even the existence of this kind of crap cheapens the game. They are also selling the skill sets and full recipe sets. Stupid.
I don't mean to sitewhore - the link to my gaming blog is in my sig - but I'll quote what I wrote there. It's just easier to quote that then rephrase it to post here:
Me wrote:Oh, Namco Bandai, what in the hell are you thinking?
I’m looking at Major Nelson’s blog, which advertises the new content offered on Xbox Live Marketplace, and not to be too melodramatic, but I’m pretty annoyed with some of the Tales of Vesperia content offered for sale. For instance:
- 300,000 Gald (300 Microsoft Points)
- Lv. UP + 5 (200 Microsoft Points)
- Lv. UP + 10 (300 Microsoft Points)
- Recipe Set: HP Recovery (100 Microsoft Points)
- Recipe Set: Parameter Boost (100 Microsoft Points)
And these are just a few.
There are soooo many things wrong with this.
Not only do the descriptions of these items in the marketplace provide some - admittedly minor - spoilers, but all of the items offered can be obtained within the game. You can either play the game and get the full recipe set the right way, or you can just buy a cheat to permanently unlock them from the get-go. (I should note that you can only purchase these things once, so you cannot buy your way into maximum character level as soon as you crack open the shrink wrap.)
I can see something like this for an action game or whatever but an RPG? RPGs are enjoyable, in part, for the sense of discovery they convey to the player. I’m usually not one to argue against giving the player choices, but the idea of selling in-game money and experience and skills and obtainable items to the player just cheapens the whole experience as far as I’m concerned.
Namco is basically selling completionism and a grinding crutch for money.
Not to get too conspiratorial here, but what’s to stop a company from putting convoluted, painstaking crap in their game and then snookering people into purchasing the content online. You know, like Team Ninja tried to do with Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 and all those silly costumes that would literally take you well over 1,000 hours to procure the legitimate way. So they sell them online too. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Am I overreacting? I find this pretty stupid. I'm usually pretty lenient on this kind of thing. I didn't mind Oblivion's horse armor. I didn't see a big problem with EA's Battlefield gun thing. But this really bothers me.
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It won't cheapen YOUR experience, and someone buying it won't affect you in any way. Nothing was taken out of the game for these items to be for sale.
There's other shit that is more deserving of smouldering generic rage.
XBL/PSN/Steam: APZonerunner
But DLC and the Marketplace have also brought us great things like Rock Band songs and Braid, so you have to take the good with the bad I guess.
This is low, but its not as if there isn't precedent for this kind of thing.
I disagree. Read my conspiracy theory for a reason. Slippery slope argument, perhaps, but I think this is a very bad thing to put into the market. At all.
Eh, as a professional who also plays games I don't have the time to play RPG's anymore and these "cheats" DLC could be useful for that type of person, as I no longer have the time to enjoy the RPG's I used to love and pour endless hours into. When your time is worth a decent amount of money and you want to flesh out a story and enjoy the meat of an RPG as opposed to a grindfest to beat those uber fights I dont really see the harm.
As a previous PA'er mentioned YOU don't have to buy these and all these updates are actually availible to you. This isn't a horse armor sort of aspect where you can't access it without money, in that regard its good.
Then again, Namco Bandai has been exploiting the marketplace far worse than any other manufacturer. Pretending that Beautiful Katamari is a budget title at $40 and then locking a bunch of levels that are already on the game disk and selling them in DLC packs that add up to $20. Apparently buying all the planes in Ace Combat 6 would cost over $100 beyond the price of the game itself. And then you have the Idolmaster games in Japan. I haven't been able to find an official price total, but I have no doubt that with the money that it costs to buy all of the Idolmaster DLC, you could easily buy a PS3. The Metal Gear Solid version. With CA sales tax added on. You'd probably even have some money left over for some additional games and accessories.
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
Dont like it? Dont buy it. They didnt force you into this, its just there, sure its stupid but thats your opinion. Im sure there are people actually buying this stuff. It was put up there with the intention of making money, like everything else thats put up there, I mean really, did you complain this bad when Space Giraffe came out? I doubt it, but this comes out and its a big deal? JEEZ!
Seriously though, if its not forcing you to buy it, then dont, but dont bitch because "omg they put up content that makes the game easier for real moneys!!!!" Just ignore the bullshit and let em do what they want, if someone wants this stuff, theyll buy it, if not, then dont, its that simple.
What relevance does a good but extremely niche $5 shooter have to do with paying money to bypass grinding (and the inherent assumption that companies could design their RPGs to have even more grinding in an attempt to coerce people into paying them extra)?
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
It's not good if they artificially inflate the difficulty or grindiness in the game so they can nickel and dime players. Why not just make your game NOT a grindfest instead of asking people to pay not to make it a grindfest? Or if you want to charge people, add a cool, new dungeon and charge 400 or 800 points for people who DO like to grind. What they are doing here is absolutely stupid.
Also, there is 0% doubt in my mind that this is exactly what Team Ninja did with Dead or Alive Xtreme 2. If you want to unlock all the costumes for each character the legitimate way, you can easily spend 2,000 hours playing the game. It took me 67 hours to complete one character using the casino glitch. Yes, 67 hours using a fucking glitch. But lo! you can purchase full sets for 800 points a pop online.
Seriously, wow. Selling +10 levels is really lame.
e: Also, DREZ! I haven't seen you in forever.
But they CAN "force" you into this, or at least make it so their game is an extreme grindfest that encourages purchasing bonuses like this to alleviate the grind.
I'm not sure what this has to do with anything. On a side note, though, I think Space Giraffe may be one of the five worst games on Xbox Live Arcade. It is total ass.
Yes but my argument is that it shouldn't be available at all. Businesses should be encouraged not to do this, for the reasons I presented.
I guess since I'm always here that makes me some kind of deformity or birth defect then.
For 500 MS Points ($6 and change), that's 15 levels.
This. Microsoft approves this pile of shit for money, but won't allow freebies for TF2? Lame.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/
Well, yes to a degree, but it's sort of a difficult situation to be in. Do you really want to block Namco-Bandai from doing this and potentially sour any future relationships with them? They've been a great partner, developing many 360 titles, including several that are exclusives. You have to pick your battles wisely, and this is probably not one that matters all too much.
That said, I've said this before and I'll say it again ... I don't have problems with this type of DLC to degree. If the items can be acquired through normal gameplay, then what's the harm in giving lazy/spoiled gamer an opportunity to cheat/buy their way to victory? You and I think it's dumb and a waste of money but if someone else thinks its a reasonable cost, then it's no skin off my back. And it's more money to the developer, which is a good thing.
Now I agree that there is a slippery-slope that's present. What if the items/gold/exp are technically achieveable but would take obscene amounts of time to get and are drastically important to the game? Well, that's the worst case scenario since now you've practically increased the cost of the game to including the price of the DLC. That I don't agree with. But until that actually comes, if it ever does, that's when I'll be mad. Remember, slippery-slope arguments aren't very valid because they're so broad. You can make them on so many things. That's why I think it's best to usually ignore them until they actually happen if they happen.
That said, I'm willing to bet that it will happen. And it already does. With free games. Countless Korean MMOs are built on this model. And I'm fine with that. Battlefield: Heroes is going along this track as well. The industry needs to try more and more different business models, since the old ones aren't really working out too well for many.
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Yeah.
I mean, granted, MMOs are a competitive sport, but isn't this similar to selling gold and paying for people to powerlevel your character for you? I mean, I've always seen that as dumb and I thought most other people did too. Most companies seemed to, too.
Leveling is a part of the RPG experience, at least in a Tales game. So is getting Gald. So is finding the recipes. And so is learning the skills.
I really don't see how Namco Bandai or anyone else even has the right to offer to rob people of the experience ("experience" in the literal, not the RPG sense).
Now if this were WoW and Blizzard offered a service to allow people to buy levels, what would you all be saying here? And if you had a problem with it, is it merely because WoW is a competitive-type game?
This is absolutely true. At the same time though, Microsoft is represented at least somewhat by what they allow on their marketplace. I mean if I have a book store and I sell knitting guides, then I am furthering the knitting cause or something. And Microsoft is doing the same with this level-for-money crap.
You make some good points overall. I just snipped the rest to make the above point.
"rob people of the experience"? Whaaat? Maybe it's just me, but I sense a hint of over-entitlement here ...
And for the record, I actually think Blizzard really should think about offering legitimate gold/level-buying services, if only because people who want it can (and already are) getting it through unofficial channels. The gold farmers and the like often employ nefarious means to get to this point (using bots, exploits, clearing out zones of minerals/etc. pushing out legitimate players, etc.).
I wish I could spend more time explaining my opinions. As you might guess, I tend to swing very Libertarian in real politics. Sadly, I have to run for Fantasy Football draft #3 ... so maybe tonight, if this topic is still around and not locked, I'll participate.
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I work on this: http://www.xbox.com
Let me put it this way:
I'm a writer (or would like to be). I would never sell the ending of my book to prospective readers for three bucks or something like that.
I frankly don't think that's right. I don't think I even have that right as an artist. Or maybe I do, but I would be completely stupid to exercise such a right.
And I think this is similar to that example. Games are meant to be played. There is something very wrong with selling a skip button to the player in my eyes. But as libertarian as you are I assure you I am an artistic purist so this whole thing just gives me the heebie jeebies.
It's not a terribly slippery slope when it's happened a couple times over the past year or so, and pretty much no one is following suit, other than the verrrrry occasional EA game. Shrug your shoulders, say it sucks, and move on. Don't buy it. That's the easiest, most effective way to send the message that you don't like something like this. Not raging about something that you don't have to ever ever ever buy.
Even so I think it cheapens gaming, as I said in my earlier posts, merely because it places a particular MONETARY value on "leveling up 10 levels." I mean, how much are three chapters in The Great Gatsby worth, versus the entire work?
See, I view games as art. When Namco Bandai does something like this, they are communicating very strongly that games aren't art, they are product. And maybe they are, too. Maybe they are both. In fact, all art is also product, unless you just sit home alone, carving poems into your skin with a hot knife. But this is like saying "okay, we'll sell you this little bit of the game so you don't have to do it." I think that's just bad. Very fucking bad.
Never heard of a serialized novel apparently. Ya know, back in the pulp days when artists would sell a few chapters of their books at a time as a novella, and continue doing it over a stretch. Kind of like episodic gaming today, a lot of which (Telltale being the exception) that will end up costing you more for the full game than if the developer released their game as a full title. I only bring this up because you mentioned selling a few chapters at a time, I don't really think it has anything to do with this.
Hell, neither did your MMO comparison, because people buying gold and items in a game with thousands of other people can genuinely fuck up the experience for others by artificially destroying the economy, inflating prices, devaluing the monetary units, etc. They're selling cheats, it's like individually buying a game genie or Action Replay for an individual game (something they used to do BTW, or at least units that had more specific cheats for one game).
Then you also have the good reviews for this game itself so far also not mentioning anything having to do with inflated grinding (which most JRPG gunshy gaming journalists would jump on like rabid dogs), which also deflates your argument as well. It's silly. Don't buy it, and less people (of which there are already nearly no companies doing it anyway) will do it.
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
So you're suggesting that the easiest and most effective way to register a complaint about something, is to not register a complaint at all? And after companies make money by offering such things, I'm sure they're going to take the time to consider all of the non-purchases made and realise the error of their ways, right?
Drez has a point. This stuff starts somewhere and it snowballs into larger things. From the very beginning of the Marketplace, there were always concerns about companies nickel and diming the consumer by offering trivial trinkets for real money. And whenever somebody says 'Hey, wait! I don't think that's appropriate!' the response is usually 'Why do you care if it won't effect you? Keep your mouth shut and it will go away.'
Effective advice when coupled with a suggestion to remain perfectly still so the T-Rex won't see you and then moves on. Not so effective when companies start charging for meaningless geegaws or shortcuts to gameplay and the general consumer public eats that shit up with a spoon and goes back for seconds.
Also, folks should keep in mind that this isn't even the first time that NamcoBANDAI as done such a thing. They have also offered a DLC 'cheat' that unlocks all the music pieces in Eternal Sonata.
For the record, I think Drez is being a bit alarmist. Frankly, this is the direction the world is moving. When DLC for other titles makes Texa$ (and much of it is hardly as directly beneficial as the ToV DLC), there will be less and less incentive to avoid using the Marketplace as an extra arm for generation of income. Ultimately, the problem is less with NamcoBANDAI using an effective means to increase cash flow and more on the people who will actually give money for such things.
The Future Is Now.
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So it's not like people don't cheat. And yes, people still buy strategy guides, which is cheating.
They saw a market and took a stab at it.
No one is forcing you to take part.
Not really.
And that's what people should be against. At least I am.
I understand where this point of view comes from. Imagine, for argument sake, that ToV sells a million copies. Now imagine that 100,000 people buy just the DLC listed in the OP. That's $12.50 in the US. That's $1.25 million.
One tenth of the audience just gave over a million dollars to buy content that required practically no effort to produce. NamcoBANDAI (or anybody else) isn't going to give a rat's ass what the other 900,000 people didn't buy. Keep in mind that even if you have no intention of paying for such things, there are plenty of others who will.
Do not engage the Watermelons.
This sort of thing is adding an official monetary value to effort put into playing through a game.
This isn't analagous to the buying serial novellas as mentioned earlier, but it's more like your ability to retain what you read, but only if you buy the memory of what happened in each chapter seperately.
Case in point: You're playing the game, then OH NOES, your memory card/hard drives decides to fail or corrupt. You have just spent your money getting all the recipes, lvlling your guy to a million, and have a hojillion gold.....oh wait, no you don't have them any more, and your purchases were a one-shot item only.
Only instead of popping in your Gameshark/Codebreaker/Pro Action Replay (which is a WHOLE other issue I'd love to go off on) and redoing a few hours of lost time, people who have spent money buffing their guys will want to blame someone for their time lost and money spent, because now, they have a direct, official place to point to and complain that there are actual monetary damages.
Like I said, I'm old, and grew up during a time when cheaters spent $40 on their Game Genies to cheat through every game, and I fear this sorcery of online shenanigans where companies are trying to sell you their games bit by bit, but it just seems a bit dangerous to me that this type of strategy can land people in jail for grand larceny when they don't return their neighbor's memory card.