this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2024
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Didn't Helldivers 2 ship with a kernel level spyware? I wouldn't put it on this list.
Did it? Most games with kernel-level systems won't run on linux, but Helldivers 2 is running fine for me via proton.
That's because the anti cheat is running in a fake kernel with Proton. Developers have ways of detecting when the kernel isn't real... Sometimes... But the Helldivers devs don't seem to mind for now.
Why is this comment downvoted? To my understanding it's entirely accurate...
Make of this as you will.
Lately I've been running more and more into situations where am so thankful GDPR is a thing. Law is pretty good on its own but with EU being extremely willing to use it makes it all that much more powerful. They don't shy away from punishing the biggest and the richest and fines from GDPR violation hit percentages of income which makes it such that it can hurt everyone.
Also riddled with microtransactions and yeah it's not the worst in that regard but there's still a lot of game design decisions that are worse off because of it.
What the hell are you talking about? I've been playing it since it came out and I would totally understand if someone never even found the menu for spending real money. All the weapons all the Armor All the strategends are all in game currency that you can't even buy. You can pretty much only get Cosmetics with the super credits and a couple hilariously enough pretty bad weapons that are so cheap that you'll be able to buy them off the super credits you can simply find laying around in maps if you really want them
I feel like neither of you have played it with your description.
For those that havent played -
The game has 4 types of currency, Medals, Requisition Slips, Samples and Super Credits. Medals, Requisition and Samples are only rewarded through playing the game(Either for completeing missions, or found in missions).
Super Credits can be bought with real money, but can also be found in mission.
You unlock Strategems with Requisition Slips and upgrade them(Ship Upgrades) with the Samples.
You then have "War Bonds" which are where you unlock the rest of the gear(Weapons, Armour, Boosts and more). This is where you use Medals. The War bonds are most equivilant to a Battlepass, but they are not timed and do not disappear so even if you come to the game a year later you will be able to buy and unlock everything on the very first one. The game shipped with the basic war bond that everyone had, and the first premium war bond, this is 1000 Super Credits to unlock, then you use Medals to unlock items with in it.
As for other micro transactions, there is a "Super Store" that has 4 items in it that rotate ever few days(I cant remember the time it is 2 or 3 days), that has surprisingly cheap items especially compared to what other companies are doing. They are not just purely cosmetic though, but they do not really offer anything you can not already unlock through the warbonds. Armour has different classes(Light Medium Heavy), and they have a different bonus(More Stims, More Grenades, throw grenades further) and so you might find a combination that you can not get on a warbond that you want(Light Armour with more range on grenades for example). I don't know if I would class it as P2W, no bonus is overpowered or game changing, but it is definitely not just cosmetic.
I don't have the game yet, but I'm planning on getting it and... That sounds annoying as fuck and needlessly complicated. What's wrong with just having a single currency? What you earn by playing is a single currency, everything you buy in game only uses that 1 currency. Everything you only get with real money is just purchased outright, without the need for some BS currency that only has value in that 1 game. Why the hell does nobody do that?
It's not annoying. It wasn't explained that well I guess but it's very easy to get into and play with the progression system.
The reason for having multiple resources for these is the same reason for having multiple resources in a tabletop game. It's fun to balance what you do, risk reward with different modes of play.
Long term goal is finding samples on the map and extracting alive with someone that has carried them with you. If you die you drop them etc. This resource loop makes sense it is a whole secondary to the main missions and will net you upgrades in the end that are for your ship which means anyone that joins your squad.
The money you get from everything and is used for unlocking the "spells" and they are also gated by xp. This is also great and well thought out as the player will unlock toys in bursts and have time to learn them side by side with learning new mission types.
When you select a mission you get to choose an operation which is several missions in a row with increasing medal rewards for completing main objectives.
You can do side objectives and clear enemy sites for more rewards at the end.
All this is also balanced by the run having a timer which makes the enemy count increase steeply, so you have to balance if you want to complete more or less, if you want to safely extract, if you want more medals or money etc.
This creates a dynamic difficulty choices so the players can together calculate different risk reward scenarios based on what they want and how intense.
You can win big on a hard mission, but can't extract unless you fail. It's easy to get overwhelmed and run out of reinforces (extra lives)
Gosh it's so much brilliant progression and gameplay choices put in here and it makes my game design brain gush. It's so anti pay to win which is very refreshing, you get the suoercredits to unlock stuff in missions and in passes and it doesn't give better stuff exactly, it gives different stuff, like the tf2 weapons or something like that, and it's just different tools to finish jobs that needs to be done, which makes all players be able to contribute in their own way. It's just very very smart.
I have played it, but I guess im just not as receptive towards microtransactions as most people.
The main issues I have with it are the grinding rpg style gameplay loop, and forcing players to return to the ship as often as possible.
Maybe I'm being too cynical but I assume its to try to get people to play as long as possible and look at the storefront as often as possible.
You can unlock a lot of things for free including some premium currency, but that's just to increase player familiarity with the premium store and to make the player think about the cosmetic upgrades as often as possible.
Another issue is with the difficulty scaling: it doesn't scale with the number of players or add AI players to the game if someone drops out. On its surface this can be explained by not wanting to spend the man hours to develop smart friendly AI or put more work into difficulty balancing, but the financial incentives also work against this as without it people are encouraged to invite friends to play with them, thus generating free advertising for the in game store.
That's just a couple of examples, but every game design decision gets influenced to some extent by the way players interact and think about microtransactions. This isn't really the case with baulders gate 3, which is in a completely different league in terms of quality(and dev budget tbf) to hell divers: it feels a bit like comparing McDonald's with a michelin star restaurant 😂 (I haven't played lethal company so can't comment on that one)
Calling you back to the ship frequently so that you have the ability to change planets or change systems. The entire map of the game is basically real time and dynamic with a game master occasionally coming in to fuck with things.
You're supposed to tug of war fight with the AI over different planet systems and objectives. A lot of people are just basically sticking to One Planet their entire gaming session and it's currently causing super Earth to not really gain much ground because they will simply hard liberate a planet say from the automatons but then rush over to the bugs who have taken over a planet in the meantime. You're supposed to try to spread your effort out like it's an actual Active war
And there is so much design language in the game that shows this, did you know that if you are looking out at the ships while you're at a planet that those are fairly real time? Not perfectly obviously but when you see ships out your window shooting down orbitals sending down drop pods or exploding that's all something that was caused by an active gameplay session on that planet.
When people call down supplies you see that, if their ship explodes it means they just lost the mission, it helps you gauge how well a planet is currently going with the idea being you can now decide whether or not this planet is in need of more help or you should go elsewhere.
You also may want to change your loadout, you may have gotten enough metals to unlock a new weapon enough samples to unlock a new strategym or a ship module. So if you weren't frequently going back to the ship to spend them you would be stuck on an equipment set for quite a while which could easily kill the pace of the game.
Literally everyone I know is currently playing the game and I did a little bit of a pole in my group and most of them don't even remember that there is a store for spending real money and not a single one of us ever has spent any real money the game really isn't pushing it hard you can ignore it completely very easily
I'm not saying it's difficult to ignore the microtransactions, but it influences the design in a way I don't like 😂
I guess it's just not for me as I couldn't care less about the lore or the global state of planets and position of other players ships 😂
One form of microtransaction that can be obtained through regular gameplay instead can't be classified as "riddled with"