What you need to know
- As Dragon’s Dogma 2 launched on PC Thursday evening, a previously hidden suite of microtransactions became available for purchase.
- Things you can buy for the single player ARPG include fast travel points, Rift Crystals for hiring Pawns and buying special items, appearance change and revival consumables, a special camping kit that weighs less than normal ones, and a few others.
- In response to the microtransactions, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is being review bombed, with the game currently sitting at “Mostly Negative” on Steam.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 is being review bombed
No, it’s not. Review bombing is a reaction caused by an extrinsic factor. DD2 is being reviewed negatively because of what’s built into the game.
Yeah, too many “journalists” chuck around the term review bombed to mean when a AAA game gets a load of (deserved) hate.
It’s still a form of review bombing. If the game is good (I have not played it nor seen any review so I don’t actually know, but the article is making it sound like the only issues are the mtx) aside from the predatory mtx, does it deserve a mostly negative rating ?
I wouldn’t necessarily disagree, but I can also see reasons to if one thinks that you are not getting a much worse experience by not paying for these micro transactions.
Also, it’s fucking Capcom. They have good studios but they have always been greedy bastards. So I can’t say I’m surprised by any of this.
If the game is good (I have not played it nor seen any review so I don’t actually know, but the article is making it sound like the only issues are the mtx) aside from the predatory mtx, does it deserve a mostly negative rating ?
Yes. Yes I think it does. Seems like many other people agree!
Well I agree too but it’s not a fucking law of physics, the journalist is allowed to have a different opinion on that
The microtransactions are one issue among many. To be frank, putting microtransactions in a $70 USD title would still warrant negative reviews in and of itself, but the the game is also having catastrophic performance issues and crashing on PC for what seems to be the majority of players, to the point of many Youtube channels covering it that did not get press copies being all but unable to play at all.
It doesn’t matter if a game has a lot of good elements, if it has bad ones and people cite those bad elements in negative reviews it’s not review bombing, it’s consumers giving an honest review of a product.
Imagine that you’re having the best dinner of your life. Everything you like, jizz-in-your-pants delicious, served by beautiful people of your preferred sex. Then dessert comes, a massive cake, but while you’re enjoying it, you notice a different flavor. And a smell. You look and in the middle of the cake, there is a half-consumed turd.
Would you still rate it “9/10 great except for the turd”? Or would you remember it as the restaurant that served you a turd?
(I stole this hyperbole from the Angry Joe Show’s GOT review)
Lmao, ok, downvote me for providing context. I’m not even disagreeing. Personally I don’t think this is review bombing. Y’all need to chill.
The problem is that those two things look exactly the same without the added context that you can’t fit into an easy title and people won’t read the details anyways.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 launches to “Mostly Negative” reviews criticising previously hidden microtransactions, and man, what a bummer
did it for ya
I’ve never heard of your definition before. It was “review bombing” when Payday 2 added MTX to the game, which I think was one of the early uses of the term even.
Review bombing is when people organize and get other people to review a game poorly for something they’re opposed to, rather than the product actually being bad as a whole.
This isn’t to say it isn’t deserved for DD2. I have seen tons of reviews of bad performance and things like that. Also one where someone got stuck in the floor and had to delete their save to be able to play the game again. The MTX stuff mostly sounds overblown from my experience with DD:DA, but it does suck it’s there are all. I can’t tell you if it deserves mostly negative or not because I haven’t played it.
Imagine putting microtransactions, paid character edit vouchers, Denuvo, and anti-cheat into a $70 single player only game. They know what’s happening, they’re just trying to shift blame onto the community.
…putting microtransactions, paid character edit vouchers, Denuvo, and anti-cheat into a $70 single player only game
This reads like satire wtf
Think of it as their very shitty solution to mods and cheats that so many dumbasses pay for. “Hey, why let those cheat makers profit off of our games? Let’s make the cheats ourselves! But you know, for better profit, let’s chop off parts of the game and call them cheats instead.”
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Kernel level anti-cheat
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Micro-transactions
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Paid character edit vouchers
Ouch, I’d be pissed too if my $70 was still not enough to buy all the character models, let alone that I would have to pay to re-customize my character. They 100% deserve this negative criticism.
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Wait, anti-cheat? Wtf?
It has Denuvo Anti-tamper and Denuvo anti-cheat. If they didn’t include the latter, you could just bypass the microtransactions entirely.
There’s a mod right now that adds the item you need to change appearances to a vendor for like 10 gold, so I’m not really sure what cheats it’s preventing exactly.
part of the reason im always pro mod option, there will be a fan who offers an optional “fix” for a game.
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$70 price point for entry, microtransactions for stupid shit, and launches with severe technical issues.
I’m so sick of your shit Capcom.
When a game releases with multiple purchases along side it, it just means you chopped up my full price game and are charging me extra for what I should have already gotten
WWE 2k24 in infuriating like this. If you want the full game on release, it’s actually like $150.
Supposedly a lot if not all of these micro transactions are simply faster unlocks to the content/feature, still though not a good look.
That just means they deliberately made the game tedious with the goal of annoying people into paying
This is what I’ve pieced together as well. Everything can be fairly easily found and used (or hoarded) in game. However, this in no way excuses the other issues.
That said, I don’t blame the devs. Someone light the C-Suite bonfire.
If the devs know what they’re working on, they’re choosing to participate in it.
Following this thread of logic the thousands of devs laid off in recent weeks must be heroes. After all, if they don’t have a job, according to you they can do no harm, and that’s a good thing.
Unless you think someone who refuses to do the work they’re assigned are likely to retain their position?
Peoole can’t just quit their jobs because they don’t like a few decisions by the suits. If that were feasible for everyone then the world would be a better place.
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Thanks for letting us know. Removed from my wishlist.
Things you can buy for the single player ARPG include fast travel points
What in the fuck.
Wowwwww that is noxious. Maybe I’ll check it out in 5 years, but for now this is a hard pass.
I was so hyped for this game too. The original had something special if a little underdeveloped. I was excited to see if they could make it bloom.
Guess not anyway
“Pay us more money to spend less time in the game we made” Yeah I think I’ll just pass on the whole game actually
I don’t know exactly how true this is, but I read in another thread that you can’t even delete your save and start over
I’ve read that you can start over. But not in any kind of sensible in game way.
You have to completely delete all of the game’s files off your computer and steam cloud
You have to start from a fresh install every time
Maybe they’ll sell a microtransaction that allows people to start over.
I was joking around but I just read that is literally true, what the hell?
No, it’s not literally true. There’s an MTX to re-customize your character (not start a new game), which seems to be an option in-game too but maybe later or maybe it’s expensive.
I hate having to “defend” these MTX but everyone is misrepresenting what’s going on…
That’s another dlc coming once it’s been out for a week.
FWIW the items to do this are also available in game. I haven’t played yet so I don’t know how reasonable it is to get these in game.
I get that, but they’re really exploiting their customers with impulse control issues. This is all designed to fleece whales and I think it’s a pretty disgusting practice that’s becoming too normalized
I don’t disagree, but some of the articles / reactions I’ve seen are like “you have to pay for fast travel points!” which isn’t accurate.
I’m thinking back to deus ex: mankind divided, which had a strongly negative reaction due to the fact that you could buy praxis kits. But if you played through those games…there was absolutely no reason you needed to buy praxis kits. The game was definitely not one where you would find yourself grinding out praxis kits, and in fact buying them would’ve probably spoiled the experience.
Then there’s about a million jrpgs like the Tales of series, or falcom’s trails series, where you can buy high potency healing item kits as DLC. Again these are absolutely not needed to finish those games. But they’ll make certain achievements a lot easier. And again this has been going on for a long time.
I don’t know, while I think this stuff crosses a line (and the fact that they deliberately hide it from reviewers shows they’re well aware), the line has been steadily moving for a long time. Personally I have never once in my life bought one of these dlcs (I actually hate when they make them free in complete editions! Don’t break game balance as a “bonus”!) but obviously people do cause they keep selling them. I have no idea how gamers reset this. But at the same time, review bombs are just…kind of lame. People will be looking at steam reviews 5 years from now and not even remember what the controversy was.
No review bombs are really good actually, they are the only reason why Square patched the steam version of nier automata years later, people reviewed bomb the steam release after they released a much better port on the windows store.
Right because when I’m browsing game reviews long after whatever kerfuffle is forgotten, it’s really helpful to have to guess whether it’s a legitimate problem that was long since fixed, a controversy that had to do with a dev’s actions completely external to the game, some Andrew Tate loving incels upset because WOKE, or if it’s actually a bad game. Review bombs are childish and people have a hair trigger for them. And I don’t think they’re terribly effective. I’m also pretty sure Nier Automata only got patched due to microsoft’s gamepass requirements.
Nope, it’s another version entirely. The steam version received no patch for 4 years until the review bomb started.
They almost got me with preorder last night, but I was like nah I’ll just wait and see in the morning. I love how i’ve been reading for weeks that “it’s good they made fast travel hard”, like preparing us for a fast travel MTX. Or it’s the greatest character creator of all time, but to edit after you have to spend more money - the game is basically $100 canadian. Absurd.
Don’t forget the performance. One review was saying it’s so bad that a dragon was speaking before his animation started playing.
Fuck, really? I mean, I’m not like a die-hard fan of the game(s) or anything, but the first one is still pretty enjoyable. And it’s $5 on steam.
And it’s a totally complete game, with an in-game barber/character customizer. You can’t change your character’s body type though, only the hair and skin colors/styles.
You can buy the MTX items InGame at the vendors. Still shitty to have the MTX but yea…
If you can do it with in-game earnable currency that’s a bit different.
Tbh I haven’t heard that that’s the case, but I also haven’t gone looking.
They already said you could, but at least in the first one it was an end game/post game item to edit your character. You can check the news tab for the game on steam.
totally complete
Nah m8, they had circumstances that forced them to release it before they wanted to. There is a bunch of cut content and other not fully realized features. People just don’t notice them much because the game is phenomenal as is.
I mean literally every video game has some cut content somewhere. Whether it still feels complete afterward is a different story.
Never pre-order. Learned that long ago. Even games I have waited on for a long time, i’ll still wait. Starfield was most recent example of that.
I think I will break the rule though for the factorio DLC, if they do a preorder.
Just curious on what you think the benefit of pre-ordering a factorio dlc would be instead of buying after release?
No real benefit. Guess I was trying to say that i trust factorio devs.
Damn game has devoured years of my life…
I learnt my lesson from Starfield; the most expensive video game I ever purchased… I pre-ordered that tripe and suffered the consequences. Never again.
I am so glad I learnt my lesson and decided to wait for the reviews for Dragon’s Dogma 2. Pretty sad that this is the outcome, but I am glad that I decided to wait and see.
Starfield got me and I should know better by now than to pre-order. I just figured it’d be the usual ‘Bethesda puts out crap that modders quickly sort’ but the it ended up being ‘fast travel, the game’ which seems hard to fix.
Thank god for BG3, though - rock solid game.
Fast travel worked almost identically in 1 with no MTX. This isnt why it’s like that, but it was an opportunity they say that they could sell.
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Lack of simple fast travel is what made the first game horrible
Something was off with the way fast travel worked but I didn’t expect they’d try to fucking sell it.
From my understanding, it works exactly like the first game (though prior to Dark Arizen which gave an infinite teleport item). You can get teleport crystals you can place and spend a consumable to teleport to them, just in 2 you can pay real money to get more. 1 also didn’t have the carts that 2 has to travel to different places. I’m not sure how those work, but I assume it’s cheaper than teleporting, and you don’t need a crystal there.
Kind of, yeah.
The difference is that the first game has a reusable ferrystone that you are given for free (patched in post launch) and you couldn’t buy them with real money.
DD2 has a much bigger map but you are still only allowed to teleport to the 2 big cities by default, fast travel is a lot more important than in the first game.
It looks like it was done on purpose to sell MTX rather than to make the game better, they knew ferrystones were a problem in the first game since they fixed it and still went ahead with this.
That permanent stone was only added in dark arisen after they removed the micro transactions. This system is exactly the same as the first game in launch.
I didn’t know the original had MTX at launch, looks like they didn’t learn from it.
they knew ferrystones were a problem in the first game since they fixed it and still went ahead with this.
This is the big one for me. I don’t know how affordable they are in 2, but the fact DD:DA made them free in 1 shows there was some kind of issue. Was that just a design issue that’s been fixed in 2 or something more fundamental though? I can’t say without experience. Fast travel is absolutely in the game for free though, despite what some people are saying. It’s a lot more limited than most games, but this isn’t most games. It’s about as limited as the original at launch, a little less actually.
This is why we don’t pre-order :/
Stop buying this shit, and they’ll stop doing it.
They won’t stop doing it. Think of how many live service games have failed. Are the investors going to stop drooling over that Fortnight $$? AAA game are made to please investors, not players.
Boiling everything down to econ101 serves to absolve the bad behavior or games companies as “rational actors” while placing the blame for shitty games practices on “stupid” gamers.
If enough people are buying it, they’ll keep doing it whether you like it or not. So why waste your energy getting mad about it?
You already lost the fight when you start talking about “bad behavior” and “blame.” Just accept the fact that you’re not the target audience for shitty modern AAA games, and move on.
It’s OK. I’m not the target audience either. I’m not the target audience for Taylor Swift concerts, either. Does that make it “bad behavior” if I don’t like her ticket prices?
Stop getting mad about companies making money. That’s literally their purpose. There are plenty of other products out there to buy.
Regulation. Bad behavior that can’t be policed by econ 101, gets regulation. Stuff like recognizing the predatory nature of these micro transactions and limiting their exposure to kids and warning labels like we slap on actual gambling. Even higher taxes on profits derived from these sorts games. Maybe they aren’t so profitable when we actually protect the vulnerable and they have to truly rely on just the ‘stupid whales’ and not kids.
Is it predatory, though? Or are people just upset because they fell for pre-order hype, despite it being 2024 and they should know better.
Let’s not muddy the waters by comparing it to gambling. Pay-to-win (or pay-for-convenience, which, in my opinion, is the same as pay-to-win) is not gambling. It’s just shit. You’re not paying for a randomized chance at a reward. You know exactly what you’re getting.
I don’t have first-hand knowledge of the game, but from what I have seen, there are no predatory IU elements to lure vulnerable kids into stealing their mom’s credit card.
Don’t get me wrong. I think the MTX is shit. I was mildly interested in the game, but now I won’t consider it even on 75% Steam sale. Capcom won’t be getting my money, that’s my choice.
We don’t need the government involved in regulating shitty entertainment. It’s not water or electricity or healthcare. You can just not buy the thing. If you start calling for regulation of everything you don’t like, that’s how you get geriatric politicians who never played a game in their life and still call it “the Nintendo” deciding what you can and can’t have in your game.
I was responding in general to the concept, not specifically this implementation, which as you say is not the worst implementation for sure.
We’ll have agree to disagree on pay2win not being predatory. Again, this specific implementation may not be as bad, but the market as a whole absolutely has examples just as dangerous as slot machines. They’re built on the same psychology.
As for regulation, it doesn’t strictly have to come from the government. Both movies and games have rating boards specifically to avoid government intervention and I think they are failing consumers here. The threat of government intervention might see the ESRB and the various gaming marketplaces adopt more strict rules and warnings. Things like preventing the sale of games with specific, predatory mtx dark patterns and mechanics from sale to minors, stronger warning labels on games containing these sorts of practices and penalizing companies from adding MTX in a deceitful manner (such as after launch). A game would be heavily penalized for adding adult content this way and perhaps MTX should be treated in a similar manner.
You not buying the game is 1 vote, someone that pays for micro transactions get multiple votes everytime they buy, you lost, they paid for your copy.
The ones who buy items in-game are the ones who buy the games. Those are the customers they want to appease the most.
Damn… I was really close to pre-ordering this one and I held off basically just because I wanted to wait for information about the Steam Deck compatibility. So glad I didn’t pre-order. I figured all of the glowing reviews that came out earlier this week would have mentioned secret microtransactions, but it seems like this was a very nefarious bait and switch. I like to give the benefit of the doubt and apply Hanlon’s Razor, but it really feels like this was a deliberate and sinister act.
There’s rarely any reason to preorder a digital thing. They don’t run out of stock.
The preorder “bonuses” are rarely worth it.
You made the right choice.
Reviewers often get a free copy of the game, the DLC and unlimited consumables so most pre release reviews are far from honest.
Not really, they just hide the micro transactions during the review period, Activision did the same with CTR.
Never, ever pre-order.
The only “advantage” is that you can play the game a few hours, maybe a day earlier, which makes no difference whatsoever in terms of the fun you get from the game, and to get that “benefit” you run a huge risk of not only wasting your money but also of getting to experience the actual feeling of having been scammed.
I can understand that most people lack the impulse control to wait 6 months or more (by then getting it cheaper and with most bugs fixed) and just “have to have it right now”, but in the digital download era pre-ordering might at best get the game in your hands a few hours earlier than just buying it when it comes out.
Cant wait to play the next Monster Hunter and buy hunting permits at $2.99 for each hunt.
You mean the series that has been selling a character edit voucher since World?
I’ve been a fan of Monster Hunter since the PSP and somehow completely forgot that it was made by Capcom. I was already a bit peeved that they moved G-rank behind a paywall and a year of waiting but now I’m nervous that you may not be super far off. People already think that the game has a desire senser and with AI being what it is today it wouldn’t be very hard to sell a ‘premium carving knife’ with charges on it to get that Gem or Plate you need to finish your set.
Theyll turn the elder melder into the elder lootbox store
Oh no. We gotta stop giving them ideas.
You can earn minimum wage in premium hunt credits by working the grill with the felyne chefs (up to 20 hours of work youre not getting free insurance by working full time you freeloader)
Gonna have to pay to skip cutscenes too. And SOS flares aren’t free but aren’t expensive either. Oof, we should be execs somewhere.
G-rank was always dlc, but physical on another version called 3U, 4U or XX, or frontier united.
I didn’t have to pay for G-rank until Iceborne and Sunbreak. I’d like to go back to those days.
Because you arrived late so you just bought that version
I’m not sure what you’re getting at. I bought every version of every game since the first one and pirated the Japanese versions before they were localized. G rank wasn’t something you had to pay for until the games I mentioned. It was either in the game or it wasn’t. I’m not interested in having an argument though so I’ll just see myself out of this weird pseudo-argument.
Digital safari is a pricey venture.
They did so well with World and Rise… I’m cautiously hoping they learn from the backlash here.
I’m going to be angry about microtransaction once the game actually runs. A 5800X3D and 7900XT should not be getting 20 - 40 FPS with medium settings at 1440p.
I got it refunded. I’ll play it in a couple years after all of the patches and when I have a new gpu
For the character thing, as long as you don’t care about restarting you can delete your save and force steam to overwrite your cloud save.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/2054970/discussions/0/4289188517340869363/
The rest is absolute bullshit and I hope Capcom gets shredded for this travesty… I’m the type to give a game a chance, and I will play this, but holy shit the greed is disgustingggg
Or you can also play the game and buy the item ingame for 500RC, it’s not that big of a deal.
The availability of the item in-game doesn’t matter. If anything it’s availability in-game being “not that big of a deal” just showcases further the scumminess of it all being that purchasable item exists only to scam people by tricking them into thinking any modicum of money is worth a one use item.
And even then, if nobody complains about it, then they’ll still continue on as they will. They’ll do so regardless, of course, but at least you can say that there was pushback of some kind.
Having a pushback is fair, saying that the game is trash and review bombing the game for it far exceeds what I would consider fair pushback.
The game captures really well the first’s feel, it’s just an improvement in almost all aspects, which is great! It’s a really good game, those unnecessary MTXs giving the game a negative review score is kinda crazy.
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Cool, so if I’m your landlord you have no problem with me charging you $1 every time you use a light switch?
These are not the same thing, at all
I think a more apt comparison is if you’re renting out a place where every light switch is three-way with one switch near the light it controls and another in a closet with all the other light switches. You can control the ones in the closet for free, but the ones in a reasonable location are pay-per-use. The problem isn’t that the features aren’t available for free. It’s that they poured resources into deliberately making things worse, then they charge you to undo that. Literally creating negative value.
Except I’m playing the game right now and these “deliberately made worse” elements have not once inconvenienced me in 20 hours.
You are all crying about nothing.
I have no interest in this game, so I wouldn’t know how it actually affects gameplay. But do you not agree that this is shitty business practice? You have a game. Sell the game. If you want microtransactions, then produce extra art or something and sell that. You can even make the case that separating out parts of the game into various DLCs on launch is acceptable. You’re at least charging for something of value that you created.
Implementing anti-cheat costs resources and makes the end result strictly worse. Now you want people to pay you to undo that? That’s creating negative value. We want the economy to run on people creating positive value.
How.
I’m playing the game right now moron, you don’t have to spend a single dime for any of the things you spend money on. It is pay to play faster, cry more about it. Your experience isn’t tarnished because someone else spent more money on the game than you.
You’re right, but I just wonder where it will end up. Everything has a beginning.
This is the exact same monetization that Devil May Cry 5 had in that it is practically non-existent. You can earn everything in game, you do not have to spend money.
I’m glad you’re not bothered by microtransactions. I personally don’t like them, and I never buy games with anything more then cosmetic microtramsactions. But we all have that line in the sand we won’t cross, this is one of mine.
You really are comparing a basic necessity with a game? Talk about a false equivalency geez.
Also, since when is electricity free? This is such a weird comparison.
Seems like it’s just being accurately reviewed. How else are companies supposed to learn this is not okay?
Capcom really saw the positive hype they got with this previously niche tittle and decided to go all RE4 weeks after release on it day 1. There’s not even a new game option, I feel bad for Itsuno but it’s deserved imo.
You can get all items in-game but cheats shouldn’t ever be a paid feature, I criticized Saints Row 4 back then, I’ll criticize Dragon’s Dogma 2 today.
