The Division’s Vendor Might Be the Worst Example of Microtransactions Yet

Zarathustra[H]

Zarathustra[H]

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I've never played The Division personally, but I have heard good things about the game, and had intended to try it myself at some point. I've always been a sucker for good, dreary, post-apocalyptic games. That was until I read about the new 1.6 update. There is now a new in-game vendor selling cosmetic items like backpacks, weapon skins and hats, which can only be bought by spending real money on in-game credits.

As I frequently tell my Roblox-crazed stepson it seems crazy to me to spend real money on virtual fashion apparel. I can barely enjoy Counter-Strike anymore with all of its skin trading requests. I have to admit, this development with The Division has me much less likely to try the game, especially since the premium vendor has been called "the worst example of microtransactions yet." Nothing screams post-apocalypic wasteland like a gun covered in pink skulls, amirite?

Outfits round out the selection cosmetics, available in $8 to $11 bundles or anywhere in the $1 to $5 range for individual pieces. Just how bad do you want to dress up as a Riker, the most generic, thuggish enemy type in the game? Or maybe you’d like to roleplay as one of the JTF, a generic soldier type with notoriously incompetent AI?
 
Try black desert online... I just bought an outfit for $30 bucks... for 1 outfit... The only benifit is you can actually aquire them in game fairly easily.
 
I don't get the complaining about this, I have 0 issues with cosmetic micro transactions. If it makes someone feel warm and fuzzy to have that pair of hot pink skull logo boots wtf do I care? As long as it in no way affects my game play I'm all for developers attempting to make more money off their product. I never have and never will spend money on cosmetic items but I enjoy seeing more unique clothing/weapons in games on other players as it makes my game world seem bigger and less generic.
 
Ragenrok said:
I don't get the complaining about this, I have 0 issues with cosmetic micro transactions. If it makes someone feel warm and fuzzy to have that pair of hot pink skull logo boots wtf do I care? As long as it in no way affects my game play I'm all for developers attempting to make more money off their product. I never have and never will spend money on cosmetic items but I enjoy seeing more unique clothing/weapons in games on other players as it makes my game world seem bigger and less generic.
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I don't have a problem with it if it is both thematic, and optional. (in other words, is not pay to win)

So much of a good game is about the realistic on point feel of everything. I want an as immersive experience I can really live in with as possible. As long as these microtransactions are managed so they don't clash with the overall feel of the game I have no problem at all. As soon it allows you to wear your orange dildo-hat while you charge into battle with pink fuzzy boots and a "Hello kitty" AR-15, that's it. The game is completely ruined for me. Not even worth playing anymore.

Skins are fine, as long as they are 100% believable with the rest of the environment of the game.
 
Black Desert is painful as I bought the limited special bundle for that game for an obscene amount of money and then found a lot of those exclusives were not as good as if I waited. But, ultimately I don't have a big issue with these micro-transactions for non-game essential trinkets. Whether you play Guild Wars or The Division, these trinkets and bonus items pay for the servers that keep the game online, they pay to keep the programmers employed and developing new content. I'm tired of the game business model where a studio develops a game sells it, lays off the staff, abandons the title and develops a clone of the same title a year later. Ubisoft isn't a great company, I have family that works there and have done contract work with them, but they are actually retaining people for games and using DLC and microtransactions to fund new content and keep people employed. You may think that $60-$100 for a title is a lot of money, and it is on an individual basis (not historically adjusted for inflation, but since income hasn't increased it is larger portion of one's salary)... but in terms of the total cost of the lifetime of game, especially an online game, it is a drop in the bucket. So, if you want new expansions, updates, new content... you have the OPTION of buying skins, outfits, boots and maybe even in-game currency.... or not buying it and playing with the standard skins.
 
For MMOs I don't worry about whether it fits the theme or not because after a while you have beaten the same boss like 12 times, so it is hard to stay gritty and realistic. And I don't mind cosmetic micro-transactions because I don't spend money on them. I just ask that the game doesn't constantly keep telling me that they are for sale.
 
Been playing Division for 10 hours so far. Have not seen any gear that stands out from the feel of the game.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I don't have a problem with it if it is both thematic, and optional. (in other words, is not pay to win)

So much of a good game is about the realistic on point feel of everything. I want an as immersive experience I can really live in with as possible. As long as these microtransactions are managed so they don't clash with the overall feel of the game I have no problem at all. As soon it allows you to wear your orange dildo-hat while you charge into battle with pink fuzzy boots and a "Hello kitty" AR-15, that's it. The game is completely ruined for me. Not even worth playing anymore.

Skins are fine, as long as they are 100% believable with the rest of the environment of the game.
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I'm new to The Division and what I found out is that for the most part you can play all by yourself and wander the streets of NY handing out water and energy bars for handguns and EOTEC gun sights. The only time I have seen other players so far is when I am in a Safe House or on the rare occasions that I have poked my head into the Dark Zone. I'm too low level for the DZ right now, but maybe later.

I have really enjoyed the game so far and I have also enjoyed how it transitions in stages and I have not yet sampled the DLC yet and I have them too look forward too as well.
 
It's interesting now that I think about it but I quit "The Division" at the exact same point as I did "Destiny"

In Destiny once you got lv20 or so you literally stopped leveling as the only way to proceed was to grind for gear and do PVP.

With The Division right around Lv20-21 I got bored with it because at that point unless you had the right gear it felt like every gun either took forever to kill enemies and that basically meant grinding darkzone/pvp whatever, which I don't care for.

It wasn't difficult in a traditional sense like "Oh I needed to solve a puzzle" or "I needed to jump just right". It was a slog. A boring grindest. QBZ gave the best description for it with Ghost Recon Wildlands - "UBISOFT game #097907966"

Its like Ubisoft has figured out the perfect formula to get a certain demographic who are placated by micro-progression/reward games.

The Division was the last one for me. I tried to go back and at least finish the campaign, but PVE was dead.

A lot of people value "hours" and "Length" as their financial investment.

Not me, INSIDE or OXENFREE were both like two hours long and have stuck with me longer than every other Ubisoft game I've played combined.

It's not just Ubisoft really, it's any of these Micro-reward games. I wish reviewers as a whole could universally start labeling them as such. Call it a genre of it's own. "Grindyurmegear"
 
piscian18 said:
It's interesting now that I think about it but I quit "The Division" at the exact same point as I did "Destiny"

In Destiny once you got lv20 or so you literally stopped leveling as the only way to proceed was to grind for gear and do PVP.

With The Division right around Lv20-21 I got bored with it because at that point unless you had the right gear it felt like every gun either took forever to kill enemies and that basically meant grinding darkzone/pvp whatever, which I don't care for.

It wasn't difficult in a traditional sense like "Oh I needed to solve a puzzle" or "I needed to jump just right". It was a slog. A boring grindest. QBZ gave the best description for it with Ghost Recon Wildlands - "UBISOFT game #097907966"

Its like Ubisoft has figured out the perfect formula to get a certain demographic who are placated by micro-progression/reward games.

The Division was the last one for me. I tried to go back and at least finish the campaign, but PVE was dead.

A lot of people value "hours" and "Length" as their financial investment.

Not me, INSIDE or OXENFREE were both like two hours long and have stuck with me longer than every other Ubisoft game I've played combined.

It's not just Ubisoft really, it's any of these Micro-reward games. I wish reviewers as a whole could universally start labeling them as such. Call it a genre of it's own. "Grindyurmegear"
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We're just different I guess.

I played one character through to about level 26 and I didn't even know there was a level cap at 30, which for some reason still allows people to level somehow to 256 which I haven't discovered yet? Maybe that's their Dark Zone level ?>

But when I hit level 26 I started over with a new character and happily rocked along even easier since I was getting better at everything, and I hit 30 and discovered new stuff like set armor. I started collecting that green stuff man, had to create a spreadsheet to track what I had so I would know if I should buy something or if I already had it.

And now I have discovered World Tiers, that at level 30 you can basically set a higher difficulty level for yourself for higher quality gear so now I am re-collecting that green stuff again and I am learning more about how to tweek my characters, etc so that they are more effective.

So I am still enjoying it and I don't see it slowing down yet. I'm even working on picking that first character back up cause he can use gear the higher character has found for him. It means I can have a couple of different builds ready to go depending on what I plan to do.
 
The new order.

Anyways, I have no issue with this type of in-game transactions. I only get peeved once it turns into pay-to-win.
 
Kiddies love that crap. Just ignore it. You can obtain everything you would want from the world. Only advice is don't touch any of the phones/Intel until you are maxed - you can farm caches for high end gear with them.
 
Destiny did the exact same crap, so did Rust, so do most games. They're literally drowning in money from how much people care that their gun looks like a pink pony.
 
lcpiper said:
We're just different I guess.

I played one character through to about level 26 and I didn't even know there was a level cap at 30, which for some reason still allows people to level somehow to 256 which I haven't discovered yet? Maybe that's their Dark Zone level ?>

But when I hit level 26 I started over with a new character and happily rocked along even easier since I was getting better at everything, and I hit 30 and discovered new stuff like set armor. I started collecting that green stuff man, had to create a spreadsheet to track what I had so I would know if I should buy something or if I already had it.

And now I have discovered World Tiers, that at level 30 you can basically set a higher difficulty level for yourself for higher quality gear so now I am re-collecting that green stuff again and I am learning more about how to tweek my characters, etc so that they are more effective.

So I am still enjoying it and I don't see it slowing down yet. I'm even working on picking that first character back up cause he can use gear the higher character has found for him. It means I can have a couple of different builds ready to go depending on what I plan to do.
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Character level maxes out to level 30 with world tier up to 5.
Gear level maxes out to 256, which is done by collecting better gear & weapons. They are labeled with their gear score once you reach level 30 instead of character level.
Underground level maxes out at 40
Dark Zone level maxes out at 99 (I think but I don't frequent the PvP zones much).

I've personally put in 128 hours since November, so I've been enjoying it quite a bit but I'm very disappointed they're not continuing the story PvE content. At the moment, many other new games will pull me away from the game but I'll probably jump on every once in a while to hopefully acquire exotic gear & weapons.

Zarathustra[H] The cosmetic purchases have very little to do with the game as a whole. You can deck out your characters as much as you want & you might look cool to some but it will not change the gameplay. I recommend you try the game & actually give a true review from your own experiences. It's a good game in its own right even though the support for it will be minimal for this year.
 
piscian18 said:
It's interesting now that I think about it but I quit "The Division" at the exact same point as I did "Destiny"

In Destiny once you got lv20 or so you literally stopped leveling as the only way to proceed was to grind for gear and do PVP.

With The Division right around Lv20-21 I got bored with it because at that point unless you had the right gear it felt like every gun either took forever to kill enemies and that basically meant grinding darkzone/pvp whatever, which I don't care for.

It wasn't difficult in a traditional sense like "Oh I needed to solve a puzzle" or "I needed to jump just right". It was a slog. A boring grindest. QBZ gave the best description for it with Ghost Recon Wildlands - "UBISOFT game #097907966"

Its like Ubisoft has figured out the perfect formula to get a certain demographic who are placated by micro-progression/reward games.

The Division was the last one for me. I tried to go back and at least finish the campaign, but PVE was dead.

A lot of people value "hours" and "Length" as their financial investment.

Not me, INSIDE or OXENFREE were both like two hours long and have stuck with me longer than every other Ubisoft game I've played combined.

It's not just Ubisoft really, it's any of these Micro-reward games. I wish reviewers as a whole could universally start labeling them as such. Call it a genre of it's own. "Grindyurmegear"
Click to expand...

i wouldn't credit ubisoft for figuring anything out.. the cosmetic micro-transactions have been done for years and very successfully long before ubisoft ever did.. there's more long term profit in cosmetic sales then to hand people an easy mode button for a set price.

that being said i'm completely fine with games doing that, it has no effect on how i play the game and i get a kick out of seeing the ridiculous shit people come up with when they mix outfit skins and what not.
 
Allow them on only cosmetic accessories is fine, provided those same accessories can be acquired given enough time playing the game, but nothing in my opinion should be micro-transaction only. (I also do think games should be far more expensive than they are now though, which I know most people won't agree with me on.)
 
If idiots weren't buying this stuff wouldn't keep happening. Don't feed the idiots.
 
Nytegard said:
Allow them on only cosmetic accessories is fine, provided those same accessories can be acquired given enough time playing the game, but nothing in my opinion should be micro-transaction only. (I also do think games should be far more expensive than they are now though, which I know most people won't agree with me on.)
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It's nothing outrageous that I've seen so far. Some of the emotes are a little over the top but nothing to get all riled up about. I haven't purchased anything but in my opinion, they fit the game.
 
So they moved the real money items from the launcher to an in-game vendor?

Big whoop.

If you don't want to spend the money, then don't.

There are a crap ton of drops and a vendor that you can use in-game money to buy wearables from.

I've got a super massive amount of different outfit items and it seems like there is a never ending supply of them.
 
Dan said:
Try black desert online... I just bought an outfit for $30 bucks... for 1 outfit... The only benifit is you can actually aquire them in game fairly easily.
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That's your own fault for dropping 30 bucks on a video game outfit.
 
Wolf-R1 said:
If idiots weren't buying this stuff wouldn't keep happening. Don't feed the idiots.
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They don't help, but this is just another example of how blatantly dishonest AAA publishers are. Ubi swore up and down prior to the release that there would be no microtransactions, but they know that they do not have to be held to account because their customers are mostly comprised of spineless sheeple with the memory recall of a gold fish.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-division-wont-have-microtransactions-ubisoft-s/1100-6435139/

This is one of the litany of reasons why I don't buy most AAA games at release. Fuck you Ubi, I will pick The Division up on a $1 humble bundle special.
 
I find a lot of cosmetics in The Division don't mean a whole lot, cause other things go on top and cover it up anyways. That or the game looks dreary to begin with, so it's hard to make out what anyone has. Now if they decide to make some gun with LED strobe lights on it, I'd be out. Not that I care. I stopped playing The Division a long while ago. I got it for free with my GTX 970.
 
There were same complains about Rainbow Six Siege when they started to add these cosmetic funny outfits for otherwise serious tactical game. But after one year playing against people in clown masks I must say I do not notice them in game. The game-play is so immersive that you just do not notice outfits of other people apart from end game cinematics where you can show off with you golden gun.
 
teksu said:
Anyone here play Warframe... err Fasionframe?
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I play Warframe.. well haven't in a couple months but I played a massive amount for quite a while. I just haven't had the time to play much of anything in a while.

It is a good game. The only thing you really have to spend money on is for extra slots... unless you actually have the time to sell parts to other players for credits or whatever they are called.
 
As a frequent player of the game let me add a few things. My biggest complaint is that most of these are fairly expensive. You can barely see the backpack skins, so I've seen very few people have one.

All of the outfits and clothes do fit the style and lore of the division world. There's a rikers set, JTF set, mercenary outfit, and a contractor outfit that I really liked from the PTS that we haven't seen yet.

As far as weapon skins there were neon green and pink skins in the game since launch so to complain about some pink skull skins now seem out of touch. I like the variety of weapon skins.

And there's some new emotes that you can buy, like social, funny, taunt. I'm just glad there's more than just the clap and jumping jacks.

I'm fine with it overall. I bought a few items. These are non impact items.
 
This seems to be the way many games, and maybe it's just Ubisoft games, are designed. Build a somewhat interesting game, make it sorta grindy to keep the player base. This strings players on long enough for those first few DLCs, make more cash on it then. Once the community starts to dwindle, introduce more or less meaningless cosmetic DLC to squeeze the last few bucks out of the dedicated community that remains.

I guess my problem with it is at what point in development does this become zero sum. You can say "I don't care if they add cosmetic DLC, I just won't buy it", but would the developement of cosmetics have otherwise been spent on the core game (more missions, more loot items, more experiences)? It is similar to the issue with the purchasable power in Deus Ex, at what point does DLC's existence in a game start to affect the game design. "Let's only put one powerup in this level, it will make it more likely that players will spend more money".

The other argument is that DLC like this justifies dev time because it results in revenue, does it make business sense to make a slightly worse game with cosmetic DLC than a better game without? Game development has gone corporate big time, with all the good and bad things that come with it. No judgement really, just exploring the issue.
 
britjh22 said:
This seems to be the way many games, and maybe it's just Ubisoft games, are designed. Build a somewhat interesting game, make it sorta grindy to keep the player base. This strings players on long enough for those first few DLCs, make more cash on it then. Once the community starts to dwindle, introduce more or less meaningless cosmetic DLC to squeeze the last few bucks out of the dedicated community that remains.

I guess my problem with it is at what point in development does this become zero sum. You can say "I don't care if they add cosmetic DLC, I just won't buy it", but would the developement of cosmetics have otherwise been spent on the core game (more missions, more loot items, more experiences)? It is similar to the issue with the purchasable power in Deus Ex, at what point does DLC's existence in a game start to affect the game design. "Let's only put one powerup in this level, it will make it more likely that players will spend more money".

The other argument is that DLC like this justifies dev time because it results in revenue, does it make business sense to make a slightly worse game with cosmetic DLC than a better game without? Game development has gone corporate big time, with all the good and bad things that come with it. No judgement really, just exploring the issue.
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I'm sure the development of cosmetics are easy to do, so that time spent doing it probably would have made zero difference to something like actual game expansions (new areas, weapons, armor, missions, etc).

I don't buy cosmetic DLC, unless it makes an actual noticeable difference and only if it's cheap. The price of these cosmetic DLCs is a bit much. $1-2 dollars for a full outfit seems to be the price on most other games. $1.5 for individual pieces? That's too much. Either way, I wouldn't pay for any of these.

It's not like the game is something like Dead or Alive or maybe Hatsune Miku. Where outfits will be extremely noticeable.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
As long as these microtransactions are managed so they don't clash with the overall feel of the game I have no problem at all. As soon it allows you to wear your orange dildo-hat while you charge into battle with pink fuzzy boots and a "Hello kitty" AR-15, that's it. The game is completely ruined for me. Not even worth playing anymore.

Skins are fine, as long as they are 100% believable with the rest of the environment of the game.
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Agreed entirely. I don't play games that do the following. They're pure cash cows with no regard to quality, theme, or standards. I could not get into CS GO (I played Source casually years back), and the stupid skins didn't help.
 
lcpiper said:
I'm new to The Division and what I found out is that for the most part you can play all by yourself and wander the streets of NY handing out water and energy bars for handguns and EOTEC gun sights. The only time I have seen other players so far is when I am in a Safe House or on the rare occasions that I have poked my head into the Dark Zone. I'm too low level for the DZ right now, but maybe later.

I have really enjoyed the game so far and I have also enjoyed how it transitions in stages and I have not yet sampled the DLC yet and I have them too look forward too as well.
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Only small parts of the game are shared worlds the safe houses being one of them. Once you leave them you are spun off to a different instance of the game where you are in your own copy of the game. So unless they are in your party you won't see people when out in the streets unless you are in the DZ.
 
if the game was free then i'd consider paying $$$ for items to level up
but for a game that cost $60 then later throws the option of buying stuff......no thanks
it's bad enough w/ the DLC
 
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