An example would be say the mortal kombat games, you used to be able to have all the characters or Unlock them. But now you gotta pay up to 100% the game if you want everything.

What rustles your jimmies lads?

Thank you!

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[–] ampersandrew@kbin.social 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Do they sell a good product at a fair price? Do I know what's in it and get what I'm paying for? Is it future-proofed such that what I bought won't disappear if the seller turns off their servers? Does it refrain from using shady tactics to manipulate me into buying something I don't want?

If the answers to all of those questions are "yes", then it doesn't bother me. For instance, Paradox games. Lots of people seem to feel like they need all of the content for a given game, but I don't understand it. They released what they had for a full game at launch, and then while a large portion of that team can move on to prototyping their next game, a smaller team remains behind to come up with some goodies that you can modify that base game with to keep it fresh, if you're interested. It's low cost for them to improve the game at a systemic level, and if what they put out isn't good enough, you can just not buy it and still play the game you already enjoyed. It isn't any less complete just because they decided to attach more game to it, and this is far better for both parties than selling a sequel every year that's the same as last year's but with a tiny bit extra.

When it comes to cosmetics like Mortal Kombat's, it doesn't bother me that they exist. They're horrendously overpriced, so I never even consider buying them, because they're terrible value. There's also the shop timers that would fall under "shady tactics to [attempt to] manipulate me", so that's not cool. Far worse though is how much of that game is arbitrarily tied to server checks, including a couple of unlocks in the base game. Also not cool is that they replaced Krypt with Invasions. The Krypt was a metroidvania-esque dungeon crawl, and while it too was designed to get you to grind a bunch or spend a bunch of extra money, it was actually fun to solve. Invasions is just bot matches but worse, and it's tied behind server checks, because people like me used Cheat Engine to bypass the Krypt grind in MKX rather than spend $20 on Kombat Koins. I really enjoy MK, but they're stepping right up to, and sometimes dancing over, the line.