"Mortal Kombat X Features Microtransactions For Easy Fatalities"

[kane_magus]

(EDIT) Here is owsf2000's post on the same subject. (/EDIT)

*weary, apathetic sigh*

Welp, I guess I'll be waiting a few years until the Komplete edition of this game is available on Steam for $5, the same as I did for Mortal Kombat 9 the other day. Assuming I ever get it at all, of course.

Just to be clear here as to what is meant by "easy fatalities," it means that you can do the fatalities with simpler button inputs. That's it. You save a few button presses. Nothing more. The DLC lets you pay $5 to get access to a limited number of these easy fatalities, after which the "tokens" are used up and then you are simply $5 poorer, and then have to pay another $5 if you want more of these "easy fatality" tokens or whatever. Or you could just play the fucking game itself to unlock them that way without paying money for them. Or, you know, you could just not be a goddamn baby in the first place and do the normal fatalities.

While DLC, generally speaking, is already well into the shitter by this point anyway, and has been for years now (pretty much since the advent of DLC in the first place, even), I do believe this might very well be a brand new low.

Found the IGN article via Penny Arcade. And I'm glad I have disqus disabled via noscript, because I shudder to imagine how asinine the comments under that IGN article would be like. Here is a Forbes article on the same subject and here is an Ars Technica article. There are more if you want them.

Comments

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

Indeed. They've basically decided to cross that line of RENTING DLC instead of actually purchasing it once and actually having it. (until the service is taken down and you can no longer redownload it of course.)

Essentially what this means is that you are paying to temporarily unlock an unlock code. (I'm sure there's nothing really substantial about the actual download, especially if these are things you can unlock through normal gameplay.)

I also suspect this means that the developers probably did two things to make this seem attractive and worthwhile to today's gamers.

1. Make the normal fatalities unnecessarily complicated to begin with.
2. Make the requirements to unlock the simple/sane fataliities far more demanding than it's worth. IE: You'd probably get sick of the game long before you unlocked it all.

This tends to be the case whenever I see DLC that consists of powerup crap. IE: Bonus money for starting off the game, bonus stat points to add to your characters, bonus weapons/armor, etc. In these cases you have one of two scenarios. Either 1. The company hasn't done proper playtesting to see what's sane for difficulty, or 2. They DID do proper playtesting and beefed up the difficulty based on that to sell the bonus stats/cash. (I'm leaning on #2 personally.)

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

Also as Kyle Orland on Ars apparently said in support of this consumable DLC “It sure would be nice to get an instant headshot in Battlefield without having to go to the trouble of precise aiming or to automatically dodge without the need for a well-timed button press in Bloodborne. If this kind of DLC catches on, maybe we’ll be able to perform these moves through the magic of the free market, rather than the acquisition of specific skills.”

I don't think Kyle has really thought through what he's talking about there to realize exactly how fucked up it is, and how it'll ultimately harm the game. Who wants to play on a server where not only can you miss an instant, sure-fire headshot that your skill has put on your plate simply because someone bought the ability to magically evade it X times, you can imagine the weird moment the developers will have to sit through when a paid headshot is aimed at a paid-instant-evasion.

And then you can see developers going even further with this. Pay for X number of deaths to not count against your ladder ranking, or not to be counted against you in a match. Pay to start a match with max ammo and equipment X number of games. Pay for speed boosts X number of times.

Indeed the applications are endless. And it will make gaming suck 10 times more than it does today. (Or rather, cost 10 times more - all for nothing.)

Eventually they'll realize not only do they have to pay to rent the DLC, but we'll be on a full rental system for the game itself. $25 for just 10 games (that is, play 1 game 10 times. Better hope your internet connection is stable and there's no game freezing bugs amirite?)! After that they'll realize there are dirty pirates out there that are just keeping their game system on for weeks to avoid consuming all their uses, so they'll add a 1hr time limit per play.

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

To be fair, I got the impression that Orland guy was trying to be sarcastic about it, but... Poe's law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law) and all that. But even if that is the case, it's still one of those "Hey, don't go giving them any ideas now" things for me.

Also, not to defend this specific DLC, because I obviously still think it's absolutely despicable that this shit exists, but for what it's worth, fatalities are mostly "cosmetic," in the sense that they don't really affect the actual gameplay. I.e. you have to have already won a match before you can do a fatality. If this shit had been to simplify combos and special moves during a match and such, then it'd be more in line with the gameplay affecting things Orland was (mockingly?) suggesting.

On the other hand, I'm honestly not sure if that makes this DLC even worse, in one sense, given that people are paying money for stuff that doesn't even really affect the actual gameplay, outside of the extra fluff of doing a fatality after a match a bit more easily. Though for a lot of people, the extreme gore of the fatalities is the only "redeeming virtue" of the Mortal Kombat games in the first place. ¬_¬

In any case, I still think it's disgusting that they're charging for this "disposable" DLC, regardless of what it does.

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

As for the "$25 for just 10 games" thing... well, I figure that's where the OnLive model of distribution is heading anyway, sooner or later. That is, they'll get to the point where you'll have to pay $X per every time you stream a game to play it. Or $X per session, especially for a long game that you'd probably only play just once, but which would take you several days to beat. Or, as you said, $X per hour or some such horseshit that I absolutely would not put past them at this point.

Oh, but I'm just being a cynical, jaded naysayer, and it'll certainly never get that bad, amirite? ¬_¬ Yeah, and all those people who said DLC would never get as bad as it already is now still need to line up for that bitchslap we owe them.

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

Not sure if this is being lost under the radar or not, but another of those DLC packages is "early access to 4 playable characters" for just 29.99.

Meaning... it's already done, they're just withholding it so that people that want that competitive edge can pay up. I wonder what the total cost of the 4 characters are going to be separately...

After all, one of the playable characters available already is 4.99. If that's the price of each character new when it's released to all, then you'll be paying a premium for that early access. Early access that was deliberately created to make you pay the premium. (I'd have to wonder if they're unlock codes on the disc... I suppose I could go check...)

And if that 29.99 is suppose to be a "bargain" (cheaper than the total cost) then wtf are they planning on selling single characters at when the game itself is 59.99.

To put it on another perspective, You have early access to 4 characters for 29.99, another character for 4.99, and a reskin of subzero for 1.99. $36.97 in DLC compared to the base game of 59.99. WTF is wrong with the rest of the game that it's apparently not worth fuck all? (Or more seriously, WTF are they smoking to be charging THAT much for such a tiny portion of the game.)

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

True, I didn't even really pay any attention to what the other DLC shit was for this game, because the consumable easy fatality bullshit was already so far beyond the pale that I just didn't care. But yeah, that other DLC bullshit is almost equally as bad. That anyone at all puts up with this terrible shit and actually buys it just boggles my mind. Yeah, sure, "we can do what we want with our own money," whatever, but that doesn't mean I'm disallowed from thinking that people who do buy this shit and defend it are seriously fucking morons who are ruining video gaming as we know it.

Honestly though, by this point I guess I'm almost at the bizarro state of actually pulling for the companies that sell sketch as fuck horseshit like this, if only because I think that anyone who would buy this shit simply doesn't deserve to have their money to begin with, so "good" on the publishers for releasing this jank shit to separate said morons from their money. Better that they waste their money on retarded video game DLC like this than to, say, waste it on donating to the GOP and/or buying a bunch of guns or whatever actually harmful thing they potentially could have spent that money on otherwise. I'm only being, like, maybe half sarcastic when I say that. *shrug*

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

Oh, and here's another thing that's bullshit about this game...

I was watching the SBFP Let's Play of the story mode of Mortal Kombat X, and apparently there are characters that are indeed clearly already in the game right now, but are not playable (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPbnoiwnYNY#t=06m16s) (except through hacks on the PC version (http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Mortal-Kombat-X-How-Play-Rain-Baraka-Sindel-71371.html)), but which are obviously going to be unlocked via DLC (http://arcadesushi.com/boon-mortal-kombat-x-sindel-baraka-rain/) later (separate from and in addition to the DLC you mentioned above).

Yeah, this is about as blatant as Disc Locked Content can get.

Woolie: "Show us all the cool things we can't do in versus mode."
Pat: "Yeah, like play Baraka."