![]() ![]() Years of updates to character designs, worldview narratives, and gameplay optimization has made Honor of Kings the gaming phenomenon today. The game would be a bargain if those items simply didn't exist.In 2015, Honor of Kings was released by TiMi Studio Group in China. They've chosen to monetize the game by selling cosmetic items - or, rather, selling keys to unlock the crates of cosmetic items you earn in-game - and, well, I can't feel too upset about that. A $20 one-time purchase only goes so far towards covering those costs. I've also enjoyed the esports scene surrounding the game, and that costs money too. I've put in about 100 hours of play so far and expect to play hundreds of hours more, and that's a lot of server load. I wouldn't want it to cost more, because it needs a huge player base to offer balanced matchmaking across the huge skill range, and a $50+ price tag would cut down on people buying it on a whim to try it.īut the servers are doing a lot of heavy lifting, and need to be very reliable because a 100ms hiccup is enough to wreck your gameplay. I started playing Rocket League recently. I used to be dogmatic about hating microtransactions in games I've already paid for, but. On the other hand, the sheer amount of created content that most players will never be able to access in games they paid for can be staggering. On the one hand, you can't blame publishers for taking advantage of the opportunity to take in so much continued revenue after launch (especially if and when it's just cosmetic content that isn't necessary to enjoy the base game). Now, though, more and more publishers seem to be realizing that the same kind of grind-based, microtransaction-heavy unlock design can also be layered on top of games that already charge players a standard price up front. At best, though, unlocking things as cheaply/efficiently as possible in a free-to-play title could become a game in and of itself, adding an extra layer of self-imposed challenge. At worst, this kind of content forced poor game-design decisions on players in order to maximize publisher profits. These kinds of offers, which essentially let players pay to play the game less always make me suspicious about what's really going on under the hood.Īll of these microtransactions and time-based, ultra-grindy unlocks used to be primarily the province of free-to-play games-a kind of hidden cost built in to the business model keeping these titles afloat. Evolve similarly made unlocking certain characters instantly a bonus for players that pre-ordered the game. Advertisementįurther Reading Evolve’s questionable bargain: Pre-purchase to avoid the unlock grindOther big-budget traditional games, such as Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and Dead Space 3, have started letting players pay for the convenience of skipping the usual in-game grind for levels and equipment. Even players who want to invest in cosmetic upgrades may be perfectly satisfied focusing on a single preferred hero, who can be fully decked out with a much more reasonable time/money investment. ![]() For Honor is still perfectly playable and enjoyable right out of the box, without unlocking. Of course, there's nothing forcing players to pay so much time or money to unlock all of these cosmetic items. For players that can only play a couple of hours a day, the amount of grinding time needed is astronomical. Even at that rate, it would take about 11 months (326 days) to earn that 1.1 million Steel to unlock everything. Bystander007 estimates a dedicated player could earn about 23,500 Steel in a full week of insane, 16-hour daily grinds through Duel matches and regular Contract rewards. While you can also earn Steel for free during regular gameplay, earning enough to unlock everything in For Honor would take a good long while. That's roughly $732 (£610) in real money at the current best exchange rate of $100 (£83) for 150,000 Steel. To unlock everything for all 12 in-game heroes costs nearly 1.1 million Steel. The particular math here comes from Reddit user bystander007, who calculates that unlocking all the emotes, executions, effects, outfits, and ornaments for a single character in For Honor costs 91,500 in-game “Steel.” That includes the most recent batch of emotes which cost a hefty 7,000 Steel each just for the benefit of taunting your opponent in a specific manner. It asks for over $730 or over 5,200 hours of gameplay to unlock everything. But Ubisoft's For Honor is the latest game to add a ridiculous number of paid and/or grindy unlockables on top of a pay-up-front games. Further Reading EU takes on “misleading” free-to-play gamesAt this point in the evolving history of video-game economics, we're used to free-to-play games that make you pay exorbitant sums or grind for a ridiculous number of hours to unlock a bunch of digital trinkets.
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