Sorry your year in gaming was so dull.

PUBG has been a way bigger deal, with lasting appeal, in the wider game community this year than Nier Automata.

I played a few hours of it back when it launched. It’s a great game, but it’s definitely heavy.

Right, I was more curious about how it works in the context of a match. If I’m involved with objectives and playing well, I should get rewarded by being able to summon a cool vehicle or hero character.

Yeah, at least in FIFA and NHL (the ones I’ve played recently), you pay for cards that contain characters to add to your online roster. Certain characters are way better than others.

And 43 poor souls that gave in to the temptation of the dark side.

So do you earn more points by performing better in the match? If so, I like this system way better. Rewards people for being involved.

So far as I can remember, the Halo series has always been fairly balanced no matter when you join. I’m talking about the core game modes, not that Warzone garbage.

I mean, there’s the entire EA Sports lineup. Buy your way to the best roster, baby!

Most reasonable people are fine with unlocking the characters over time, using in-game currency (which can also be paid for with premium currency), as long as the rate of earning is reasonable. These kind of things we are used to at this point. 40 hours per character is not even remotely reasonable. That’s why people…

In an MMO, which is an RPG, the grind and subsequent rewards are baked into the game as a key component of the gameplay. Steady improvement of your character is an important part of that.

You’re still buying into this business model by supporting the game. If everyone still buys the game and only a small minority of them spends real money on microtransactions, they’ll make a tidy profit and feel justified to keep doing this. That small minority typically spends a lot more than the base price of the…

It has nothing to do with “getting good”. It means you played for 40 hours, not like you maintained a certain K/D ratio, or a certain number of wins, or some other actual indicator of skill.

Wrong. This article is about collecting one character. Luke Skywalker alone takes 40 hours of gameplay to unlock. That’s absurd.

That mime is nightmare fuel.

Step 1: <script> window.open(“www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ”) </script>

No kidding, it’s kind of a relief. Too many other great games out right now for me to want to deal with this bullshit.

The vast majority of the skins have come out in promotions after launch. All of the launch skins are buyable via the in-game currency you earn while playing the game.

Ugh, that’s so disappointing. I haven’t played WoW seriously in a while, so I didn’t know the real-world money pull had become that strong. Used to be, you just paid your $15 bucks a month and could reasonably keep up (not with the hardcore raiders, but with most of the playerbase).

I agree to a point, I think their in-game currency you earn by playing lets you buy skins for the specific character you play. It would be cool if there was more of a per-character progression system, so if you saw a Reinhardt with a “master” skin, you knew they were pretty familiar with the character. Plus, you could…