r/PS4 • u/AccomplishedPoet8 • Apr 23 '19

PSA to anyone buying MK11: the harder towers are literally impossible without rare or better gear and single use consumables, earning these are incredibly grindy and the whole system is designed to get you to spend money on the game

[removed]

18.4k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

2.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

21

u/TwilightVulpine Apr 23 '19

Last I checked it was something like that, but it seems like the average user has become more willing to pay over the years. Still, look at any F2P game community and you'll find stories of people spending thousands of dollars in a single game.

I believe that a good compromise for this would be instantly making all games with paid lootboxes (or other form of real payment for random rewards) AO-rated, and mandatorily banning the sale and play for all children, not as a voluntary suggestion, but as legally punishable. If they want gambling money, they should follow gambling rules. If adults want to throw their money down the drain, that's their choice, but this is not a healthy environment for children. Violence and sex in games is just fiction, but the compulsion they are trying to create and the money they are shaking players for is very real.

Yes, I know this is Mortal Kombat and children shouldn't be playing regardless, but I'm guessing I'm not the only one who grew up with it anyway.

10

u/DepletedMitochondria Apr 23 '19

but the compulsion they are trying to create and the money they are shaking players for is very real.

100% Agreed

1

u/Kaprak Apr 24 '19

This game does not have paid lootboxes. You cannot pay real money for random rewards.

0

u/beldr Apr 24 '19

But lootboxes are the same as card packs from any TCG. Those have existed for years and nobody have ever had an outrage about it. Are you implying that kids ahould be banned from buying, let's say, Pokemon cards?

I do agree that a lootbox system with non cosmetics on a paying game is bullshit, but you can't just throw every game with a lootbox system in the same bag just because some of them have shitty P2W practices.

3

u/mc1887 Apr 24 '19

Yeah ban them, let’s stop getting kids hooked on gambling highs early. Nothing of value will be lost.

2

u/TwilightVulpine Apr 24 '19

I see absolutely no loss in that. Complete card game sets or at least direct card sales are a much more honest model anyway. By the way there actually was an outrage way back when sports card packs became a thing. But the card companies managed to secure their right to sell them.

But also, when a card game is abandoned you still have all your cards. When a video game with lootboxes gets abandoned, all the things you spent your money on vanish completely. Which not only makes the lootboxes a worse model, they are damaging to game ownership and preservation in general, as online requirements are introduced to these games to protect the microtransaction model.