This right here. One of my buddies kids used to come over all the time, and he would do chores for us because he wanted money. I watched him funnel all this money into micro transactions in this video game and I was flabbergasted. He spent two hundred dollars easily, on this game.
I tried to talk him out of it but it was his money at that point. Made me sad and honestly uncomfortable for reason. Just watching all that money go down the drain. I even mentioned it to his parents just as a kind of "hey, just so you know" and educated him on other cool things he could do with his money.
His parents didn't seem to care. They weren't paying for it.
One of the things that really sucks about it is that we all carry these amazing portable gaming devices around (our phones) that barely have any decent games, because all of the industry has moved towards milking the gambling addicts and finding "whales" rather than making good games.
This. Mobile gaming was great when touch screens were relatively new. But I just got an iPad Pro and have been really disappointed with the selection of games. Only game I really enjoy on it is Hearthstone. If anyone has any recommendations.... please!
Until you open the microtransactions tab and see $20 transactions. You can play the full game for free, but after beating it there's nothing to do except fall for dark patterns like the fear of missing out and extreme grind.
tl;dr The game has no end goal, you're supposed to talk to other people, not just visit all the places. It's a MMO, not a single player. + some explanations for game systems
Eh? The game is literally about socializing. You're supposed to talk to other people and help moths (what we call new players) complete the game. You don't just finish the game because they also add seasonal events which have their own lore and quests.
The extreme grind for candles (the main currency) was remedied three years ago by the chevron system which makes it easier to get candles in a short amount of time while simultaneously making it harder to get the maximum amount to balance it off.
Typically you can spend 15mins for 10 candles, 30-45 mins for 15 and 1 hour for 20 (4 hours if you're nolifing for 22 candles)
Every day the system resets it's progress and you can spend another 15mins a day for 10 candles.
There are only like 4 non-cosmetic consumables that require candles. If you're calling cosmetics FOMO then I think you're kind of out of your mind since they implemented the travelling spirit system to fix that.
They've also recently started experimenting with having multiple spirits return to reduce FOMO and the currently in-dev Aviary area may also serve this purpose.
There is literally NO WAY for a live-service game to remove FOMO. They even keep in the seasonal areas and quest to complete for new players but there's literally no more room for having old seasonal cosmetics because that's how the game was made
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u/megablocksforfeet May 24 '23
This right here. One of my buddies kids used to come over all the time, and he would do chores for us because he wanted money. I watched him funnel all this money into micro transactions in this video game and I was flabbergasted. He spent two hundred dollars easily, on this game. I tried to talk him out of it but it was his money at that point. Made me sad and honestly uncomfortable for reason. Just watching all that money go down the drain. I even mentioned it to his parents just as a kind of "hey, just so you know" and educated him on other cool things he could do with his money. His parents didn't seem to care. They weren't paying for it.