kum-gulp wrote on Apr 20
th, 2016 at 4:09pm:
Not sure I'd go quite that far, but they were doing a pretty good job.
I guess it's definitely one of those things that's in the eye of the beholder.
I've seen the two extremes:
There's the EQ/Whoever runs that star wars shit model where "micro transactions" means you can buy a few meaningless health potions, VIP status, and a token character slot or too, but only have access to 10% of the game unless you buy a subscription. (I believe the
Then there is the far end of the spectrum is "Everything: $5" as in "Every THING $5!" From ammo to rezes to adventures. Not buying adventure packs, as in "pay a fee to go on this adventure once. Wanna go again tomorrow? Pay again tomorrow." Just nickle and dime every possible direction at once. My favorite? there's a 2-D side-scrolling spaceship combat game that's browser-based, sort of a rich-man's crappier EVE Online. I say rich man's because every single ship besides the starter ship costs real money to repair, and the game will flat out SELL YOU the very best stuff in the entire game for a measly... $5,000 USD.
DDO sits neatly in the habitable zone of the spectrum: sure, there's cash-grabs like healing and mana potions, and "pay-to-wins" like XP stones and potions(if you can consider the game as having a "Win" condition), but most of the things worth buying are 1-time and keep it stuff like adventure packs, tomes, races, etc. They're selling you the game peacemeal, but its not so different from the way games back in the day sold expansion packs(you had to own the original game to use the expansion).
I guess what I see when I look at DDO's model is one where nothing is available by subscription that you can't buy with a 1-time fee, and that's the way it should be. I'd never have come back to DDO if 80% of the adventure packs were subscription-only. Meanwhile, I spend enough to fund at least 2 subs, but at least I feel good about it