Tag: pay to play

2213: Paying Not to Play vs. Games That Let You Break Them

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I’m currently grinding my way through to the Platinum trophy on Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 2, and in the process I’ve unlocked a considerable number of the “Plans” in the game’s “Remake” system. For those who haven’t played any of the Re;Birth games, these are essentially a crafting system that allow you to bolt various bits and pieces onto the base game. These bits and pieces range from a boost to the amount of experience points you gain from battle to new items being available to purchase in the shops.

Re;Birth 2 goes further than its predecessor did with the Plans by pretty much allowing you to break the game altogether. Between the Plan which allows you to automatically defeat enemies you outlevel on the dungeon screen without having to actually do the battle and the “Symbol Attack Gains” Plan, which allows you to still get experience, credits and items as if you had done the battle, grinding to the game’s various endings is arguably a little too easy, particularly if combined with boosts to experience and suchlike.

At least, I’d say this was a little too easy were it not for the fact that I’ve played a bunch of Compile Heart games now, and their endgame is always like this: characters continuing to level after the usual cap of 99, stats increasing to ludicrous levels, superpowered equipment boosting them still further. In Neptunia’s case, the exaggerated power levels of the endgame is arguably all part of the satire and parody that the series is based around: RPGs are known for having big numbers in them in their final hours, so here are bigger numbers than you’ve ever seen (outside of the Disgaea series, that is) popping out of enemies as you batter them around the face and neck repeatedly with various sharp implements.

In the case of the Re;Birth games, how much you break the game is entirely up to you. You don’t have to turn any of the plans on if you don’t want to, but if you do so, it makes working your way through the alternative endings considerably easier — and manages to remain fun in the process, since there’s more to the game than just battles. It’s inherently satisfying to see Nepgear closing in on level 400 as I approach the “True” ending on my third playthrough, and I’m fully intending on blasting through the other endings after this too.

Hyperdimension Neptunia U allows you to completely break it, too, particularly in its endgame. As you clear various components of the game, you unlock various cheats which range from having infinite EXE Drive power for super-special moves to not actually taking any damage from enemies, essentially making you invincible. And yet that game managed to remain fun despite the option to completely break it; testament to its overall charm and the fact that it had a metagame structure that I found enjoyable to grind through in the name of a Platinum trophy.

As I play these deliberately broken games, I can’t help but compare them to what a lot of mobile games do. In the case of mobile games — free-to-play ones, anyway — you generally have the option to pay real money to break the game in some way, be it eliminate grinding, get an overpowered new character/item/weapon or somehow otherwise break the usual rules of the game. Some games are more aggressive than others in trying to convince you to part with your cash, with the most egregious technique being the vile “Energy” bar that throttles how much you’re allowed to play in a single session without either waiting or paying up.

In essence, by paying up to get an advantage in mobile games, you’re more often than not paying not to play the game: paying not to have to collect things, or grind experience points, or earn money, or fuse cards to make better cards, or whatever. Most well-designed free-to-play mobile games do have a means of earning the premium currency required to do most of these things, but in many cases this is painfully slow — fast enough to give you a taste, but just slow enough to make you think it can’t possibly hurt to pay 99p for 15 gems or whatever. And once you do that, any sense of achievement is gone, because you know you didn’t really “earn” whatever you got from it: you just bought it.

Contrast with, say, the Plans in Re;Birth 2, which are also providing the opportunity to not play part of the game — battles with enemies much lower level than you — but demand that you earn the right to do that before you’re able to take advantage of it. Or contrast with Neptunia U’s cheats, which unlock by completing aspects of the game: again, you have to earn your right to make the rest of your grind easier.

In the latter cases, it’s still a player-friendly move that helps save them some time while still being able to explore and enjoy everything the game has to offer, but it carries with it a sense of achievement: the feeling of having earned and unlocked something, rather than just reaching for the credit card when things get a bit tough.

I sincerely hope free-to-play games don’t become the norm, simply for this reason. Paying to skip things or acquire things without having to earn them makes the whole thing feel rather meaningless to me. I know not everyone feels this way, but so long as there are still full-price premium games that don’t want to keep charging me to keep playing — or to not play — then I’ll keep buying ’em.

#oneaday, Day 204: Inconveniences of the Modern Age

It’s difficult to argue with the fact that, on the whole, life is somewhat better now than it was in, say, the Middle Ages. People live longer, we have more things to do, we are healthier, we have things to keep us entertained and we can travel around pretty much the whole world on a whim.

So, unlike the Middle Ages, where inconveniences tended to be along the lines of “Agatha has consumption” (whatever that is) or “My liege! Thy oxen have run riot throughout the city streets!” or “My, verily that courtesan was riddled with the plague! Farewell, my sweet!”, we now have our own set of things to grind our teeth about. It’s something of a sign of the times. And living in the first world.

Peculiar Bureaucracy

“The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy,” said Oscar Wilde and possibly some other people as well. And indeed it appears to be true. When it is impossible to cancel one’s broadband contract in advance because “policy states” that they have a 14-day notice period, one naturally points out that it is well above 14 days before one will be leaving one’s property. But no, “policy states” that a 14-day notice period means exactly that: they will turn it off after exactly 14 days. And not only that, they will charge £26 for the privilege of a man flipping a switch.

This is Orange Home, incidentally. Don’t use them. They’re rubbish. And they have stupid policies. To put this in some context, I phoned BT to cancel my phone line the same day and they were quite happy to cancel it more than 14 days in advance.

Companies That Still Use Fax Machines

We’re in the 21st century! We have email on our phones! We have constantly-on Internet connections! We have printers! So why the bloody hell do I need to use a fax machine in order to send a timesheet to you? You know a scanned copy actually looks better than a faxed copy, right? And you can print it out and everything!

My Battery Is Dead

Have you noticed as phones have got more useful and multi-functional that their daily lifespan has shortened significantly? I remember having a shitty old Motorola brick that sent text messages and made phone calls and that was about it—this was pre-Snake days, even—and it would last about five years before needing a charge. Now? I have to budget my battery life.

Hai! This Costs Money!

Remember when stuff used to be free? You used to be able to get extra bits and pieces for games online courtesy of developers and mod communities. (I know you still can.) Now you have to pay to read The Times online.

There are some areas in which this is a good thing. Online journalists should be paid for their work, and if the stuff’s out there for free, then it’s not going to be easy for companies to pay them. But at the same time, that stuff which you pay for needs to be worthwhile.

When you have to pay an extra 50p to pay by card in the Chinese restaurant, or pay 30p to use the toilets at a railway station, you know something’s wrong somewhere.

We Will Get Back To You

Remember when email was mooted as the simple, almost-instant communication method of the future? Have you tried sending an email to your local council recently? “We will get back to you within 10 days.”

That’s a long time. I could have actually gone into the council offices several times during that time period. At least ten times, in fact. Given that my query wasn’t an especially complicated one, would it kill them to quickly turn around a reply? And not a copy-and-paste form response, an actual reply? Even if it’s just “Yes”. I’d be more than happy with that. (Assuming “Yes” was the answer I wanted.)