As a lifelong gamer and passionate fan of the RPG genre, I was somewhat excited for Dragon's Dogma 2. When I delved into the game, I discovered something troubling: aggressive microtransactions that sullied what could have been an decent gaming experience.
The game is full of items that are purchasable via cash shop, these include the ability to save your game, revive companions and teleport among other things. These sort of microtransactions directly detract from the quality of any game. There is the incentive of the developers to drive players to use these cash shop items, and regardless of what you think of the microtransactions if you're ok with them or not.. the fact is that a large amount of time was spent on creating the system for these microtransactions which could have been spent on just making a better game.
This sort of activity might be justified in a game that is free or costs a very small amount of money. However Dragons Dogma 2 presses these microtransactions onto the players on top of the already high price of $70.
I do want to address the common arguments from fans of the game, that say things like "Well you can earn these items in game!" or "just pay for them, they are only 99 cents to 5 dollars!". Like I said up above, the cost of the game is 70 USD. You should be able to have the full experience, especially in a game that is in no way marketed as a live service game, a simple one and done single player experience. Furthermore, the incentive is for the game to create inconveniences for the player and sell you the solution. Such as: perhaps you ran out of camps, or "Wakestones" (which revive companions) now you have to pay to resolve that inconvenience and it's clear this was intentional.
The future of gaming
Thankfully I do believe that at least in the West, there has been enough resistance against these sort of practices that I believe they are not going to be as prevalent going forward. Of course I could be very wrong in that regard, we will see. Alot of the microtransaction models for games that have earned the tolerance of Western gamers involve things that do not effect gameplay, such as cosmetics.
Path Of Exile seems to be a pretty good example of what many gamers are happy to tolerate when microtransactions are included. If you don't know, Path Of Exile is free to play, and the entire game is unlocked for all players. It does sell things such as character effects, outfits, and perhaps more questionable: bank tabs. I think the point for Path Of Exile is that it is free to play, a very big point against Dragons Dogma 2 is that it is $70.
Personally, I think we should not support a game that disrespects customers in this way. You are paying 70 dollars for a game, and then being inconvenienced purposely so you will spend more. I am glad to see that they are essentially trapped in Mixed rating on Steam and I certainly hope it stays that way. This was a short one so I appreciate your time, I just felt this was something that needed to be on the record. Thank you for reading!
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