Will this game have microtransactions?
Just wondering...I hope not.
Forum Discussion
I understand that many of you don't want microtransactions but the question is...
How do you think PvZ BFN will be able to function as Game-as-Service with only your 30$? or 40$? This is not a single player game that runs on no servers. It's a service with its own dedicated servers.
How would they keep making content for "free" without having something in return? Those devs still belong to this human world and are bound to its laws and physics. Unless, they are actually Gnomes and they just want to make everyone happy.
What I'm trying to say is, I do not mind non-intrusive microtransactions, as long as I can earn everything offered by playing the game without paying. I don't mind pouring time to earn what they are trying to sell. As long as I can earn it 100 % like those who plan on paying, without me having to spend unrealistic time to earn everything.
I do have a plan that will less likely make anybody angry. But I'm not sure how it would work from a business standpoint. This plan might actually be considered a "mercy option", rather than being intrusive/addicting/exploitative/predatory. But that's a post for another time.
I apologize for not posting this on Reddit so that some might downvote me for saying "let's make the devs of our favorite game gain money to keep their wheel spinning to offer us free content and updates".
@GammaX6My honest opinion is that the $30-$40 price tag is an intentional move to better justify microtransactions in the game without completely following the free to play route like Apex. I'm not going to completely argue with it. There is a decent amount of single player content in BFN. As long as the $30-$40 price tag prevents the season pass from feeling like a horrible grind, I'm good with it. I love Apex, but it took around 6 hours of play every day for 2.5 months to 100% season 2. Needless to say I'm taking a hiatus for season 3.
If the season passes for BFN resembles Apex's season pass in terms of grind and time required, I'm going to say we would've been better off with a purely free to play model or paying $60.
But that's just my opinion and I'm hoping for the best. I'm just talking about worst case scenarios.
I'm not saying all microtransactions are bad either. At lease they aren't selling lootboxes.@newbebop I guess I'm not the only one who stopped playing Apex Legends. I started feeling like I was a slave to the battle pass. Having to login everyday to do everything is just a chore that weighed me down. While also having to play with randoms who do the same exact thing.
I loved the game mechanics/sound-design/responsiveness of Apex Legends. But both Battlepass and solo-queue teammates made the game a nightmare for me. I'm free... I play BFN whenever I want without strings attached.
Sorry for the off-topic xD
Needed to vent off with Apex Legends a bit.
- @GammaX6 It's totally reasonable that they have to find a way to maintain the server and the update coming. I just hope that they don't get extremely greedy as EA is notorious for and that all the paid content will be restricted to cosmetic stuff.
This also might just be me, but I feel like the question of how best to monetize this game is one of the reasons it has had over a year longer development time than there was from GW1 to GW2.
It would make sense to me if they were originally aiming for a E3 2018 announcement, but due to the relatively recent (at the time) controversy over Battlefront 2's greedy monetization model, they had to rethink BFN's monetization model. This would explain the out of nowhere announcement of new content for GW2 at E3 2018. It wasn't just an attempt to renew interest in the series. It was an attempt to maintain their core audience until they reworked monetization. They would have especially needed to rework the model if it was similar to Battlefront 2's due to the outcry against such things possibly being aimed at children.
Then, I was wondering if they were actually going with a Free to Play model but waited for data on sales to come back from Apex. This would explain why they dropped such a heavy hints about BFN coming soon back in February on Twitter, but didn't officially announce the game until a few weeks ago. It would also explain the seemingly out of nowhere announcement and release of BFN. Very similar to what was seen with Apex.
But this is all conjecture. I'm glad they took the extra time and it shows in the gameplay. I just hope it also shows in the monetization. How to best monetize is perhaps the most difficult question currently plaguing the games industry, and I'm willing to bet BFN gets it fairly close to right.
Also, here's a link to the February tweet.
https://twitter.com/PlantsvsZombies/status/1092897215973023745
