Topic: Battlepass/microtransactions

Hello!

Just looking for feedback from my fellow xboxers, purely for my own understanding...

Lots of games coming out recently and I've been seeing lots of people getting very annoyed about difficulty of battlepasses or cost of battlepass or microtransactions.

I guess question is this...
If these things are for gaining cosmetic items only (i.e. not pay to win), then why does everybody get so passionate about it?
Particularly for FPS where you don't even really see your character while you're playing.
Are these things super important to you?
Maybe it's a generational difference (I'm an older gamer)?

Not trying to start an argument... Just trying to understand.

Personally I'm happy not to pay for cosmetics and of I get some additional features from playing, that's great (have been playing Apex Legends since launch without paying a penny).

If I've understood it right, it's not the rewards that's the issue but the progression. Apparently you level up rather slowly in multiplayer and so it takes a long time to get the rewards. People just want to get EXP from kills instead of having to do certain challenges.

@antstephenson It's not the battle pass per say its how long it takes to complete a Battlepass. I don't know about Halo since I never played Halo with a battle pass but with Call of Duty you have a certain about of time to complete a Battle Pass and once it expires you can't get those rewards at all in game.

You have a so many days to complete a Battle Pass usually a month or so till a new season starts with a new battlepass and new items and you can't get the previous items anymore. It might sound like a long time but for you average casual player it's not. For example I have a family, work 40 hours a week and on average play an hour or two a day of CoD and it's rare that I complete a battle pass before the season ends and as a result I miss out on alot of cosmetic stuff. Yes I could just throw $20 , or however much it is and unlock the whole battle pass but why should I? It feels like I am getting punished because I have other responsibilities and can't play the same game 8+ hours a day. That's what it comes too it's a business practice that isn't casual friendly.

With a quicker way to gain XP for the battle pass casual players can complete the battle pass and not lose out on the limited time items.

@antstephenson I don't know much about or even care much about the Halo thing but it does annoy me when cosmetics are locked behind ludicrous paywalls or literal lifetimes of grinding. In games I like at least.

I grew up in the era of cheat codes or just unlocking cosmetics through game play. It's fun to 100% a game and that includes cosmetics. Beating MGS ten times to get the tuxedo, different colour schemes for fighters in SF2, all the characters and karts in MK Wii. I love a game like that to have that amount of playability, as long as I like the game to begin with.

The remake of Crash Team Racing was borderline for me. I sunk 6 months into it but managed to unlock everything that was time limited through gameplay alone. That's somewhat acceptable to me but I'd rather games didn't have time limited unlockables.

At the extreme end of the scale, I played the story mode of Mortal Kombat 11 and went to play some towers and thought it would be a really good game to put a few months into and unlock all the skins. I looked it up to see how long it would take to unlock everything. It's either thousands of hours or thousands of pounds. I put the game down immediately and haven't returned.

I do genuinely understand that the resources required for game development have ballooned, even as early as the PS3 generation and that studios and publishers need a steady and strong revenue source. Unfortunately the industry more or less as a whole deemed cosmetics to be the sacrificial lamb to achieve this. It's sad but I get it, I am not the target audience for it. Even though I want the cosmetics, if the paywall or timesink is unreasonable then I will just stop playing the game. I just find it gut wrenchingly sad when it happens to one of my favourite game series' like Mortal Kombat.

I don't have an alternative solution for increasing revenue without increasing the price of the games themselves. I just wish that somebody smarter than me came up with something that could make both the industry and the consumers happy. I don't think the current status quo quite nails it.

I'm too old for free to play, GaaS and microtransactions. I just want to buy a game and own the game and everything in it. I don't mind paid expansion packs but locking multiple alternate costumes behind multiplieble microtransactions feels icky to me. It preys on people that are like me but are more vulnerable to that sort of thing. I have seen it happen in real life too, a friend of mine was dumping thousands of pounds a month into FIFA mobile, it almost wrecked his life.

@Ltsarge @Tasuki @ralphdibny

Thanks for your responses guys.
I guess there's a philosophical difference/preference where cosmetic items ARE important to some.
I personally just don't get it... but I don't judge others that are into it

TBH I don't mind paying a chunk for a good game that has everything included... I can even live with paying for substantial DLC (map packs etc) to a certain extent...
But microtransactions, cosmetic items, pay-to-win... forget it.

Guess I'm a bit of a dinosaur though, as this is the present and the future of gaming

@antstephenson sounds like we have a similar approach to avoiding cosmetics but we differ in that I am quite bothered by having to avoid cosmetics in certain games!

Apologies that I couldn't give more of an opinion on Halo specifically as I'm not too fussed about it. I have played all the games since I got my One X in November '19 but I don't have any nostalgia for them as I didn't have the original Xbox and only had a 360 briefly (hardware fault). I am looking forward to playing Infinite at some point over Xmas but partially so I can put a nail in that coffin for now....until I finally get around to Halo Wars and Spartan Assault on game pass that is! 😅

I thought I could offer my own experience in the broader strokes of your questions anyway as it is almost an industry wide trend that has hit some of the game series that I am a huge fan of.

I think in some respects, full disclosure and integrity in terms of sticking to the plan could massively improve optics for this sort of thing. Like if a developer or publisher said from the outset (and printed it on the back cover of the game so your average consumer could read it too) this game costs this amount, we are going to do X amount of expansion packs that will cost this much and will include this, this and this, if you are willing to wait out the hype train then we will publish a definitive/complete edition in X amount of years and also all content will always be available unless certain licenses expire. I think that would help massively. I've found that I've been caught out by games where a complete edition gets further expansion packs, certain content has ended up time limited or worse of all, certain content is exclusive to complete editions of games I've already bought so I'd have to double dip to get a complete game.