Topic: Valve starts microtransactions for TF2

[idolminds]

Now we know what Steam Wallet was for.
Valves own FAQ

It begins.

[sirean_syan]

Now that get to see if all that fanboyism they built up will pay off. It'll be fun to see people try and say this is totally awesome and that naysayers are just being ungrateful, as if we owe Valve something for allowing us to buy their games (fun as in hitting your head against a brick wall).

[MysterD]

I hate the whole idea of DLC and micro-transactions more and more w/ every single day...

[idolminds]

Now that get to see if all that fanboyism they built up will pay off. It'll be fun to see people try and say this is totally awesome and that naysayers are just being ungrateful, as if we owe Valve something for allowing us to buy their games (fun as in hitting your head against a brick wall).

Three years of free updates and people are going to complain about valve giving the option to purchase items instead of finding them? If you don't want to buy them then just wait to find them, but please stop complaining. After years of free content for tf2 and l4d, valve has earned the right to have a micro transaction store for items that you can still find 100% free in-game.

Actual comment on Shacknews.

[MysterD]

Valve has the right to have a micro-transaction store...
And I have a right to just not buy any micro-transactions.

More reasons to wait for the obligatory Ultimate Edition re-release of a game.

[Pugnate]

Honestly, I don't care about the game enough to care. It is a two year old game that is ridiculously cheap now, so really who cares.

Though, when I think about it, the problem is if this experiment is successful enough to carry on to new games. I don't see it.

[idolminds]

I think it goes to show how far we've come (fallen?). We still refer to overpriced/useless DLC as "horse armor" because Bethesda had the audacity to charge $3 for a simple cosmetic item.

And now Valve is charging up to $5 for digital hats and thats just groovy.

[MysterD]

I think it goes to show how far we've come (fallen?).

You got it right w/ "fallen."

[Xessive]

I saw an big update downloading in Steam, apparently that was the "Mann-conomy" update. I am impressed with one thing: they've finally fixed up the in-game menus. That is all.

[Quemaqua]

I'm so glad I don't care about games anymore.

[iPPi]

I haven't played TF2 at all, so I'm at a loss at what these 'items' that are for sale will do.  Is there some form of persistence with your character now and weapons and tools that change the game and how it plays?

[W7RE]

I guess companies would rather start with baby steps like this, but the main problem with microtransactions (for me at least) is that they need to be in a FREE GAME. I don't want to buy a game, then get nickel and dimed.

1: Free game + microtransactions
2: buy a game + zero microtransactions

Pick one, gaming companies! Fuck your TF2 hats and your WoW item store exclusive mounts.

[idolminds]

I haven't played TF2 at all, so I'm at a loss at what these 'items' that are for sale will do.  Is there some form of persistence with your character now and weapons and tools that change the game and how it plays?

Yeah, pretty much. A lot of this was added after I stopped playing.

They started off with unlockable weapons when they added achievements. If you got a certain number of achievements, then a new weapons would unlock. These were tied to the class updates, so if you got 10 Pyro achievements then it would unlock one of the Pyro weapons.

People didn't like this so much and it caused a lot of achievement maps and stuff so people could just get them over with to unlock the goodies, so Valve changed it so you could get them from achievements OR random "drops". I'm not exactly sure how drops work...if a player actually drops the weapon for you to pick up or you just get a random chance for it to unlock every time you kill someone. There was also a simple matter of unlocks happening the more time you played so people made idle servers that they would sit in and let stuff unlock.

The problem with random drops is you never knew what you were going to get and you might end up with duplicates. They eventually added "crafting" so you can combine duplicates to make the item you do want.

And now you can just buy the things. And at some point they added funny hats in addition to weapons. TF2 is a clusterfuck of ideas. The game is basically a mess.

[MysterD]

@Idol

Whoa...WTF happened to the awesome game that once was TF2 that I bought straight out The Orange Box? 

It's sounds like they turned TF2 into some other game...

[Quemaqua]

I couldn't fucking believe it when I saw a new character for download on PSN for BlazBlue: Continuum Shift and it was like $8.  Fuck you, assholes.

[Ghandi]

They wouldn't be charging so much if people didn't pay for it - the assholes are the people that actually pay these prices and create the market.

[Cobra951]

They wouldn't be charging so much if people didn't pay for it - the assholes are the people that actually pay these prices and create the market.

That's it, on the nose.

[idolminds]

haha, more apologetics:

If Valve didn't offer a way to buy items directly after trading was introduced, then those crazy people who have too much money would just go to eBay to trade everything, leaving Valve out of the picture entirely.

Maybe they could have designed a system where people wouldn't want to try get around the mind numbing grind and pure luck to get a single stupid decorative hat, or even regular weapon unlocks?

Please ignore that this makes Valve money. They are only looking out for you, the gamer. To save you from the evils of the ebay sellers.

EDIT

PC Gamer goes through the items for sale. This one stands out:

Dueling Mini-game (All)
$1 (for five duels)
Hold on, these are consumable? What the hell. You get five duels, initiated by equipping the item from your backpack, hitting H, and selecting the player you’d like to spar with as a metagame within your match. But bizarrely, duels don’t last an entire map–just a round within that map. In other words: if you initiate a duel with someone with two minutes remaining on the second stage of Dustbowl, it’ll only count kills within the context of those two minutes. Winning a duel grants you a badge that tracks your wins and win percentage in duels, levelling up metallically as you win more.
Worth it? NO, AND POTENTIALLY HABIT-MAKING

[PyroMenace]

Whoa...WTF happened to the awesome game that once was TF2 that I bought straight out The Orange Box?

I guess I'll continue to be on the other side of this argument since I actually played the game a bit a couple months back, and clearly you haven't. This is still TF2, the basic game hasn't changed, they have rebalanced some classes and added additional weapons, none of which has broken the game or significantly changed anything. You can still play the game straight out and never touch any of the new weapons and you won't have a clear disadvantage to anyone. This is a game that has been nurturing its community for a long ass time, people who are into it love it, and the community keeps getting stronger and stronger as the game gets bigger and bigger. So now instead of having to unlock the weapons by having to play a whole lot, you can simply buy them. Perfect, fine, I see no problem in that, in fact from a business standpoint you'd be stupid not to. Its microtransactions for totally optional shit that doesn't even gimp the game. When I played and unlocked stuff I felt it was a great incentive to keep playing, never did any time did it feel like a "mind numbing grind", it was totally fun like TF2 has always been.

But hey, Valve wants our money, who knew?

[idolminds]

Tee-hee!

[MysterD]

Tee-hee!

Didn't take long to change their mind, now did it? 

[Xessive]

"You buy the product, you get the content ... We make more money because more people buy it, not because we try and nickel-and-dime the same customers."

I hope Valve (and other developers) stand by that statement.

[Pugnate]

Didn't take long to change their mind, now did it? 

That's from 2007, D.

[Xessive]

Has someone pointed this out to Valve btw? Maybe on the Steam forums? haha

[MysterD]

That's from 2007, D.

"No shit" it's from 2007...
Did you miss my point entirely? 
I thought it was clear.

I'm saying they are so jumping on the micro-transaction bandwagon. Of course, they would - just look how well DLC does in general - especially for console-gamers and especially on Steam. Especially since Steam will actually put DLC on sale at reduced prices, unlike say online DLC stores from Bioware or Gearbox.

Also, 3 years isn't a lot of time for them here - especially in Valve Time. 

[PyroMenace]

"No shit" it's from 2007...
Did you miss my point entirely? 
I thought it was clear.

I'm saying they are so jumping on the micro-transaction bandwagon. Of course, they would - just look how well DLC does in general - especially for console-gamers and especially on Steam. Especially since Steam will actually put DLC on sale at reduced prices, unlike say online DLC stores from Bioware or Gearbox.

Also, 3 years isn't a lot of time for them here - especially in Valve Time. 

Think again, read your post and think about it another way and then think about how you are.

[MysterD]

@Pyro.

Ahhhh...I see your point now...
LMAO.

[K-man]

Everyone will be a lot better off when they start looking at video game companies as a business and not some white knight to come save us gamers from evil corporations.

[MysterD]

Everyone will be a lot better off when they start looking at video game companies as a business and not some white knight to come save us gamers from evil corporations.

Yes, gaming is a business - but really, are the items they selling worth the price of admission? I'd highly doubt that. Most of us - we're happy w/ TF2 as it was, before the Mann Co junk.

If they really want to get people excited about TF, why don't they do a BIG TF2 expansion pack w/ a good amount of maps, new weapons, and new items? Valve has already done good to the community by updating the life out of TF2 (over 150 times); and adding new content for free here and there - I'm sure they'd buy a $30 expansion willingly.

I really hate what micro-transactions and DLC have done and are doing to gaming. It's screwing it all up in so many ways, I don't know where to begin.

Or better yet - here's an idea: why doesn't Valve just do a TF3?

[K-man]

Well they're not twisting your arm to purchase it.  In fact, its just an easy way to earn in-game items you can still earn on your own right?

What's the problem?  I can definitely see issue with DLC, especially when it unlocks something already embedded in the program.  But this?  It's appears to be an easy avenue to get in-game items.

[K-man]

And the items they are selling are definitely worth the price of admission if people buy them.  Every game company is trying to take as much of our money as possible.  Every small company that is supposedly for the little guy wishes they could be the big dog.  It is what it is.

[Pugnate]

@Pyro.

Ahhhh...I see your point now...
LMAO.

hehe yea I thought you had misunderstood that Valve had changed their minds.

[MysterD]

hehe yea I thought you had misunderstood that Valve had changed their minds.

I realized that, when I thought about what Pyro was actually saying in his reply...hehe.

You know - it would be nice if Valve did nix the idea of micro-transactions, but that ain't gonna happen anytime soon, I don't think.

[Cobra951]

The points made in the thread are all valid.  But the final say is in the gamers' hands.  If they jump into every "nickel and dime" trap dangled before them, then that's where the businesses (definitely not white knights) will chase revenue, rather than from good, long, complete games sold at a traditionally accepted price.  They won't have to care about those of us who see that as a ripoff.

[MysterD]

And the items they are selling are definitely worth the price of admission if people buy them.  Every game company is trying to take as much of our money as possible.  Every small company that is supposedly for the little guy wishes they could be the big dog.  It is what it is.

For the game-dev's - of course it's worth it. They make something that probably takes little time to do and get a huge profit and return from doing do. If it works for them - that's more money for them to do what they want to do w/ their next project.

For the consumer - eh, not so much. It doesn't seem in most cases of DLC's and micro-transactions that we, the gamer, are often getting very much value for our buck. It seems like in many cases, games are getting smaller and smaller and shorter and shorter in length and in what they are offering to you, in general.

[MysterD]

The points made in the thread are all valid.  But the final say is in the gamers' hands.  If they jump into every "nickel and dime" trap dangled before them, then that's where the businesses (definitely not white knights) will chase revenue, rather than from good, long, complete games sold at a traditionally accepted price.  They won't have to care about those of us who see that as a ripoff.

That's the thing, Cobra - I'm afraid we'll get more incomplete products on the market.

We've already seen some of the tricks 2K-published game companies and the 2K-publisher tried to pull w/ Bioshock 2 (first DLC was already on the disc, but just locked-out) and Mafia 2 on the DLC side (many believe the first DLC were originally the side-missions to Mafia 2, but they re-skinned the Tommy character into Jimmy).

What's next? We gonna buy quests, missions, game-worlds, maps, items, and everything else piece-by-piece? 

[Cobra951]

Oh, so Mafia II needs DLC to become more like the game people expected it to be?  I felt very let down when I learned it was linear and short.  The demo makes it look like the perfect evolution of the GTA open-world theme (and technically superior to Rockstar's efforts too).

[Xessive]

I've always thought DLC ought to be after-thoughts or extra content that doesn't take away from an otherwise complete product; mostly costumes, customizations, and other various bells and whistles.

I'd be pretty ticked if I bought a game and then found that the only way to finish it and see the ending was to buy a DLC of the last chapter. If I feel that significant content is missing from the game and it is provided via DLC at an additional cost that's where I take offense.

The DLC for Mafia II is inconsequential and purely trivial.

On the other hand, we have Bioware setting up planned DLC for Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2, the latter having significant DLC that may carry consequences into Mass Effect 3 (Lair of the Shadow Broker). I'm not against them preparing certain content for the downloadable format but I do take issue with the significance of the content on the game as a whole as well as any effects on successive titles. Regarding ME2, I would have been delighted if they never released any of the DLC and instead made an expansion pack which included all the DLC and extra missions in one lovely package and sell it at the market standard expansion price ($20~$30).

[idolminds]

The funny thing is DLC makes me want to not buy a game right away, just because it seems like a year later they come out with a "GOTY Edition" with all the DLC included for less than the cost of the original game alone.

[K-man]

For the consumer - eh, not so much. It doesn't seem in most cases of DLC's and micro-transactions that we, the gamer, are often getting very much value for our buck. It seems like in many cases, games are getting smaller and smaller and shorter and shorter in length and in what they are offering to you, in general.

D, you're not getting it.  At all.  Who are you to say what is "worth it" to consumers and what isn't?  Ultimately it's up to the individual to decide whether or not the DLC is worth their dollar.  If so, then it automatically becomes "worth it" to them.  If they decide to not purchase it, then it isn't worth it to them.  Plain and simple.