The Shrine

http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/14/84116 ... -dlc-price

So absurd.

Yeah that's pretty terrible.

What's next, paying money each time you want to skip a cutscene?

If simpler fatality inputs make the game better, they should be the standard. Its not a new low, its a contiuation of the 'pay to not play' theory of game design - which is the laziest and sleaziest type of monetization.

So fuck off, netherrealm and WB (and anyone that supports it).

Yeah, that is the worst form of monetization I have seen, paying extra money to get around unintuitive gameplay.

Guys......


I think that this is good DLC. Mortal Kombat has always had fatalities which were a string of about 5-6 inputs and in this game that goes unchanged. There is no added annoyance placed upon the fatalities - these easier DLC versions are just for people who don't want to bother learning them. Heck, all unlocked fatalities are listed in the pause menu, so if you are playing offline you can just pause it and look at the required inputs. This is just there for people who are super duper duper lazy or bad at putting in the inputs. I feel like putting in these simplified inputs for fatalities would go against the spirit of the game's legacy, and thus having the option to pay to do fatalities incredibly easily is something that they can charge for. It's not cheapening the experience for people who just want to play the game and not touch these. It's an unnecessary addon that is dumb, but if people want to pay for it? Sure, why not? It doesn't change the gameplay at all.

bovine wrote: It doesn't change the gameplay at all.

This is naive.

If a more simple fatality input makes the game better (and thus people want to buy it), then monetization has directly impacted gameplay as the devs have opted not to improve the mechanics, but charged to bypass them. And here is where the naive part comes in...do you think the devs wont be encouraged to make the inputs more complex as a result?

PS - Also, I didn't read the link, but I assume it covers unlocking everything in the Krypt for $20 too. I am not buying this game, so I don't know, but do you really think this does not impact the devs decision on how quickly you can legitimately earn coins in game? And even if the rate is tolerable in your estimation, do you really believe they won't continue to push to make their "product" (unlock) more attractive in the future.

It absolutely impacts gameplay - the degree doesn't matter, it's a bad practice. It also effects everyone, whether you purchase it or not.

kali o. wrote:It absolutely impacts gameplay - the degree doesn't matter, it's a bad practice. It also effects everyone, whether you purchase it or not.

You can call it naivety, but I am going to think of it as optimism! The fatality inputs are not any more difficult than they were in the past - listening to the Giant Bombcast has me believe that these easy fatalities were something that was originally placed in early demo versions of the game that they used in trade shows to show off the fatalities and they just held on to them as a quick possible cash grab. The worst part about it is that these are consumables; you can buy five of them and you can only use the easy inputs once each time and then they are gone until you buy new ones. That is so dumb that I really have to stretch my imagination to think of a scenario that someone would actually consider buy this.

The only reason that I can see this being garish is that I would find the easier inputs to be a matter of accessibility. Someone who is disabled and playing this game could benefit from the option of having easier inputs for the fatalities.

Unlocking the Krypt is also something that I am not against because MK has always been known for having a large set of bonus content like this that you have to unlock. It's not gated any more harshly than it has been in the past, so this (to me) is just them letting people with less free time get easier access to the content. The content is still there for people who want it, but those who don't want to grind through the game (like you had to in past MK games) now have the option to skip it.

This type of DLC does create an incentive for them to make fatalities harder to do and to make things in the Krypt very difficult to access, but they haven't fallen into that trap for this entry in the MK series. I like it when games have DLC that doesn't make me feel like I am missing anything.

I don't like that there are extra characters in the story mode that are unplayable, but will no doubt be sold as DLC in the future. Content that is on the disk that you have to pay to unlock is something that I really dislike. Also I do not like preorder nonsense like exclusive preorder DLC from different retailers. That is dumb.

For the earn currency via playing versus buying, the only time I've seen a system where it makes sense is if whoever developed it is not too interested in making money. Or that they were interested in making money but wasn't sure how to. I mean, if you make it easy to earn stuff by playing why would anyone buy instead? It has to be pretty painful to earn stuff via playing or the model simply isn't going to work. Just because a lot of games underestimate how much people play or if players figure out tricks to get around the system doesn't mean it's a sustainable process. For example, in SWTOR it was possible to unlock everything you need for relatively cheap and then the result you get is that you'd never need to sub to the game again (still have to buy expansions). Even if you've to pay for some of the stuff with money (and you usually do not because someone's usually selling the stuff for credits) it's well below the cost of say a lifetime subscription in LOTRO, and I know Turbine has mentioned those lifetime subs cost them a ton of money since it's perpetual (and often needy) freeloaders that gets everything the game has to offer but never pay anything. Of course, that's why SWTOR ended up adding more stuff that cannot be done by people who aren't on a sub because they priced the previous unlocks way too low to make up for it. Either way, it's pretty stupid.

bovine wrote:You can call it naivety, but I am going to think of it as optimism!

Lol...I want to call that delusional...but you say it with such passion.

But put aside whether it effects you right now. Do you see why this method of micro's is *potentially* bad for gameplay?

From a pessimist point of view, if this type of DLC was wildly successful it could act as encouragement for them (and every other greedy developer) to make games purposefully complicated and then sell workarounds to people. From here a slippery slope of how difficult is too difficult and will make them the most money happens. You can go back as 'far' as the days people look back at fondly in the arcade to see bits and pieces of how some POS companies have already fed into this idea.

Bioware put a difficulty into Mass Effect 3 that trivialized combat encounters... should that have been paid DLC? Maybe difficulties in general should be paid DLC. This is a hair away from game genies, which I don't particularly have a problem with, but this is a company itself making a game and asking players who are lazy/that lack skill to pay more. At the very least, it's mean spirited. DLC should be in lieu of what would have been an expansion in the past. This is basically a cheat, and charging people to cheat looks better in theory than practice, especially if it's the company in question who profits off making the games difficult.

bovine wrote:I don't like that there are extra characters in the story mode that are unplayable, but will no doubt be sold as DLC in the future. Content that is on the disk that you have to pay to unlock is something that I really dislike. Also I do not like preorder nonsense like exclusive preorder DLC from different retailers. That is dumb.

Initial modding of the PC version shows that the unplayable characters are for the most part copy/pastes from MK9, they don't have variations or any of the changes most of the MKX cast has. So at the very least it's not like when Capcom put 12 finished characters on their disc and then called it DLC 6 months later.

Selling simple input fatalities is scummy, but I already understand why they're doing it. Fatalities and violence are a main selling point for MK(it certainly isn't the derpy gameplay), and they even go as far as giving you a fatalities mode so you can run through and see them all.

Developers have purposely put in complicated stuff 20 years ago to try to sell hint books and it didn't really work, so I doubt it'll succeed but it's just a step in the wrong direction.

kali o. wrote:

bovine wrote:You can call it naivety, but I am going to think of it as optimism!

Lol...I want to call that delusional...but you say it with such passion.

But put aside whether it effects you right now. Do you see why this method of micro's is *potentially* bad for gameplay?

I totally agree that it creates an incentive to design the game to create a desire for their players to get the DLC (make fatalities harder, make unlocking things in the Krypt very arduous, etc). It can easily turn bad, but I just don't think that it's bad in this case.

A patch that deletes all saved data. Hilarious.