H1Z1 has been getting a lot of criticism over the last few days or so with it's debut into Steam Early Access. The zombie survival MMO has been accused of being "Pay to win" which is usually a death sentience for any free to play title. In this instance, H1Z1 uses a system that allows players to call in an air drop by paying with real money. The airdrop has a random assortment of items which can include food, water, or even weapons and ammunition.
Now this to many players has been a point of interest because it sounds pretty bad. (Need some help? Give the developer a few bucks and BOOM! You got a new rifle and ammo to spare.) Now it doesn't really work this way 100%. You still have to work for it. When someone calls in an airdrop of supplies, everybody in the area can see it and also steal it. Now you might be thinking this is a little extra shady, but this is actually what the developers want to happen. When survivors all over the map see this crate falling from the sky, they know it has something worth while so all these people will converge on this one location. CHAOS!
When I first heard about the micro transactions being more than just cosmetic items, I wanted to stay far away from H1Z1; But something clicked inside my head. I thought about the Hunger Games. All these people know where the supplies are, and now they are all headed to the same place, knowing that they are not the only ones. You're not buying supplies, you're buying a war zone.
The concept to me actually seems pretty cool. Now you might feel a little misled if the messaging wasn't just right, and that is part of the developers problem. In earlier talks about the game, they went out of there way to say that the game would not be pay to win. “We will NOT be selling guns, ammo, food, water... i.e. That's kind of the whole game and it would suck in our opinion if we did that.” - John Smedley.
More recently, Greg Henninger stated - “We have made the decision to allow paid-for airdrops into the game with things like guns and other things being randomly selected as part of the airdrop,”
The situation that Sony Online Entertainment has put them selves in is a tricky one, but if the game is good and people don't feel robbed when using these micro transactions, the game will still do well with a community to back it.
Okay, so I've put about 10 hours into Dragon Age: Inquisition, and I can't decide if I am enjoying the act of playing this game. As a fan of western style RPGs like The Elder Scrolls series, I enjoy the huge open nature of just living in the world. Dragon Age tries this in a different way. The older games in the series were more linear, focusing on the main narrative with a few side quests here and there. Inquisition swings in the other direction, filling the world with side quests, to a degree is actually needed to progress the main story. How they do this is by introducing a kind of currency in the form of "power". You need to collect power by doing these side quests to gain assets and allies to Inquisition, allowing you to spend the power you earn to progress in the story. It kind of makes since in the context of the game, but sadly the side quests that I have found myself doing are boring, MMO style in nature, such as "collect 10 meat" and so on.
The main quest is more interesting, filled with dialog choices, and cool characters. I want to see what is going on in the story, but I am forced to go collect herbs and close fade rifts to gain power. It's a weird set back that is making me wonder if it is actually worth playing the boring stuff to get to the cool character moments and learning what is actually going on in the world.
You control a party of four people, in standard Bio-ware fashion, each with there own class abilities and personalities. Depending on who you bring along and what you say and do in the game, the individual members of the party will react and think of your character you create differently. This has been seen in previous Bio-ware games and works here as well as before.
With the negative things I have expressed here, I still feel like there is enough to keep me interested in Dragon Age: Inquisition. I want to love this game and I want to see it to the end. If I feel like I need to write anymore I will; maybe even in the form of a review.
As someone who is young, stupid, and has no idea where my life is going to take me, I decided that I wanted to start writing. I guess my main motivation behind this is finding out if I even like writing (weird right?) When I was in high school, I remember liking my creative writing class but I'm trying to figure out if that was more of creating stupid stories starring my friends or if I liked the act of making something from nothing.
Like I said before, I'm young. As a 21 year old who loves playing video games, I also love reading and consuming videos from web sites like Giantbomb, IGN, and Youtube. Where I am at in life, I struggle finding what I want to do career wise; but I do know that I want to end up in the gaming industry. whether this is writing, developing, managing, or even making videos, I am passionate about games.
So I think that I will start using this to express my opinions just for my own personal log, but if people somehow find it, that's cool too.
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