@Superfriend said:

@Vodun said:

Some of us work for a living, and don't have time to spend 100+ hours to grind out unlocks. We do however gain something through this "work" called "money". This system allows us to spend said "money" to get the unlocks which we wouldn't be able to get otherwise.

This system allows you to get "ripped off" but I guess you don´t really care about that. Maybe they shouldn´t design their games that way. Maybe unlocking essential stuff for gameplay should NOT take forever.

BF 3 is a pretty good example of a game that hides too much stuff from new players. If these "shortcuts" are accepted by everybody, games will go even further in this direction. Expect to grind a whole lot in BF4 if you don´t want to pay extra.

Some people enjoy the grind, there is a sense of achievement by getting unlocks that are hard to get. The way the game is designed is enticing to them. This new shortcut system allows those of us who don't have the time (or inclination) to get around that...now I don't know what pilfering amounts of money you make for this to be a "rip off", but I doubt it's going to be very expensive.

Man, forty-freaking-bucks to unlock everything? That's damn near the cost of the game itself, crazy!

As for them selling the unlocks; is it really that big of a deal? I personally enjoying unlocking kits, I'll use weapons I hate to grab that new attachment because I love seeing the "YOU GOT SOMETHING NEW" pop-up, it's like some dirty drug addiction, I just need my next hit. Saying that though, if someone wants to pay to unlock everything (and in turn, imo, removing half the fun), what's the problem?

Huh, that's a bit much... though it does remind me of a comment I believe a Blizzard developer made a couple of years ago regarding pricing of server transfers/name changes/etc in World of Warcraft. Basically, the pricing is set higher than what would be considered a "great deal" to put a threshold on how the services are used.

I can see that DICE/EA would not want someone to pick up all unlocks for 5 bucks and never play the game again.

I'm torn on the core issue. I'm in the same boat of "Maybe I'd play more if I didn't need to play ANOTHER 100+ hours to unlock the [thing] I want to play with", but I can see difficult-to-unlock items losing some prestige.

Then again, there's a lot of service stars, awards, dog tags, levels, etc that keep the "prestige" part of the game. So I don't know?

I too despise when people have the option to BUY every locked weapon/gadget in a game. But as one gets older and time is a luxury, the option to buy ones way through the harshness of the "grind" is a very good way of delivering experience. I, on the other hand, love to unlock the next thing in the line. It gives so much to the player and the total experience. But yeah, I basically encourage and discourage this type of idea.

It's a nice approach to closing the skill gap that inevitably arises when mutliplayer shooters live past the usual 1-2 week mark.Obviously, the people who've played it from the start have such a huge advantage over people who want to jump in later on in its lifetime, almost to the point that for some it's not even worth the attempt. This is a (mayhap backhanded) way of addressing that; although I'm well aware that that was far from where EA/DICE's intentions lay with the DLC, it still serves as a salve to some of those problems

@Extreme_Popcorn said:

I play BF3, I don't care. The ability to be good at the game is about so much more than what gun you have.

this..

i dont even use attachments on my guns so if ppl want to buy them go ahead..

@Cherubim said:

Why are there unlocks in the first place? Isn't customization in itself good enough? I absolutely despise the trend of having unlocks in every first person shooter. There should be no need for this carrot on a stick, the fun of playing the game and playing around with the customization options should be enough.

Selling it only underlines how ridiculous this has become. Paying 40$ to use the gadgets that are in a game you have already paid for?

simple.. unlocks keep you playing.

Don't see any issue with this. If you want to pay to get all the stuff then fine so long as there aren't unlock that you can only get by paying which I suppose would count as the map packs. Vehicle upgrades are the only thing that take time to get and are useful anyway, almost all of the weapons are the same.

I would buy this stuff if it were available on the PC because I will NEVER put in enough time to unlock all that shit while just playing occasionally.

This has happened before. Your surprise surprises me.

@Shakezula84 said:

@OfficerMeatbeef I understand/understood your position but you missed mine entirely.

No, honestly, I didn't misunderstand you, but I fear you're still misunderstanding me. I am actually agreeing with your sentiment here, in a way. I don't care about people unlocking things with money because my point is there is very important stuff that shouldn't be an unlock in the first place! Nobody should be having to pay for it, and nobody should be having to grind for it! It's a bad trend because just providing tactically important stuff from the get-go opens up the community a lot quicker than leaving everyone uneven until they have the time to unlock all the important stuff for each class and weapon. In other words, the bad trend is counting to put this stuff behind unlock walls at all, and creating purchasable unlock packs just makes it all the more suspect because now it's not even just terrible design, it's a cash grab. The real trouble is, at this point, I'm not even totally sure which is worse.

When I need somebody to put out a SOFLAM so I can kill the helicopter raining hell down upon our point from outside Stinger range and none of the scouts around have one because they haven't unlocked it yet, I don't think "wow, what a bunch of useless noobs!", I think "goddamn the developers for putting this important piece of equipment behind a pointless point wall". I do not care what rank someone is or whether they've "earned" their shit. I just want to be able to know that in a given situation, people actually at least have the access to what we need to get out of it.

@Vinny_Says said:

This has happened before. Your surprise surprises me.

"Surprise" isn't exactly what I'd call it. As I said earlier, I wasn't aware the same thing had happened with BC2 because the option was never available on the PC version, but as the number of kit and vehicle unlock options get greater and greater it's becoming more and more obnoxious. But as they have been mentioned by others as past examples: having not played Burnout Paradise or NFS Hot Pursuit multiplayer, I am legitimately curious what kind of advantages paying to unlock stuff gave one in multiplayer? That is the key element here. Are they balanced so badly that if one is racing against someone who's bought a bunch of unlocks, you have no chance? I guess I wouldn't be surprised if so.

eh whatever, they will still die to my bullets.

Remember those hours it took to unlock those Jet perks? Now every scrub will have them.

It doesn't matter in the long run, stop overreacting.

@Shakezula84 said:

Feel proud of yourself for having very little life, I guess.

Hey now, I have many obligations in life... I just forego them to pursue inconsequential status awards in a virtual environment which will procure me no long-term gain or material worth.

In all seriousness, I agree with the tone of your reply. There's nothing wrong with giving people a way around the strenuous grind to incremental unlocks. As long as DICE doesn't implement some kind of superweapon which can only be purchased with real monies, I'm happy.

Besides, anyone who has convinced themselves that ranking up in BF3 is any true achievement obviously hasn't played with many colonel-ranked players - they can be worse than completely new players, and are seldom exceptional. I remember playing alongside some kid (sounded like he was 12), who claimed that he managed, with help from his buddies, to get every unlock by good old fashioned exploitative play (i.e. stacking a server with friends and killing each other in a way which guarantees unlocks).

I personally like unlocking new weapons, it gives me time to figure out each weapon and gives me something to look forward to as I play. Some people don't like it I guess, and DICE likes to get money. If they can make money off of it, they're going to do it. It doesn't really effect or bother me too much though.

I like unlocking new things but don't play often enough to actually get anywhere satisfying, if this option comes to the PC version of the game and I happen to find myself with an extra $10 or something, and they accept paypal... I may throw money at them to play with a neat looking weapon or item for my weapons. I don't think this is an issue, at all.

@Shakezula84 said:

So actually I guess I don't understand peoples problem with it. Feel proud of yourself for having very little life, I guess.

You don't need to attack him. It makes you look self conscious about purchasing game content twice.

I think this is good from a business perspective, and I'm glad EA was smart about it by waiting about 6 months to let people unlock things through natural play time. Afterall, most people don't care about every unlock for every gun. People can just put in enough time to get the unlocks they want.

I wish we could go back to a time where games were played based on their own merits, not for the purposes of advancing in some grindy metagame. Almost a decade later and people still play CS 1.6 - not because they're strung along by the promise of their next unlock, but because it's a legitimately fucking good game.

Modern game design - if you don't know how to build a fun and engaging experience, just fill it with experience bars and unlock systems to make the player forget how miserable your terrible game makes them.

Call me lazy, I'm sure its been answered somewhere in the thread but can anyone confirm.

For the class unlocks does this just unlock the standard guns, or all of the attatchments as well? Because its actually tempting to skip like 250 kills with each weapon so I can have the loadouts I want.

@MysteriousFawx said:

Call me lazy, I'm sure its been answered somewhere in the thread but can anyone confirm.

For the class unlocks does this just unlock the standard guns, or all of the attatchments as well? Because its actually tempting to skip like 250 kills with each weapon so I can have the loadouts I want.

I think I read somewhere that if you buy the weapon unlocks it resets all your attachment unlocks for the weapons. So you'd have all the guns but no attachments for any no matter how many kills you had before you bought the unlock.

@Extreme_Popcorn: Wow....count me out then

i hate somethings too and get really annoyed by them.

like shoe laces... i mean why are they so long what's that all about... mental!

Why is this a problem? They've been doing this for a while and you don't have to purchase it.

@Shakezula84: No worries! I focused on this particular "pay to unlock" thing because seeing it brought to a head my frustration with current multiplayer-unlock game design, but I know in my frustration my point became a little scattered, so sorry about that.

It's only weapon unlocks, Attachments, levels and dogtags still have to be earned.

@Enigma777 said:

I see no problem with what EA is doing.

Says Hitler Pikachu.

I preferred the token-based unlock system that 2142 and BF2 used, so that you could continue swapping classes to adapt to whatever you wanted to in combat instead of feeling pressured to play a single class for a long while for the sake of advancing it.

They did the same thing for BC2, and have been doing so with plenty of their games before that. I honestly see nothing wrong with it.

As long as the item description is entirely transparent that all the unlocks are entirely available trough in-game play i don't see a reason why i should mind how other people spend their money.

I had 400 points sitting on my account, and I am never going to play the Co-op in this game, so I admit I bought the co-op weapons unlock kit.

I did buy the co-op weapon unlocks, as nobody on my friends list wanted to play the co-op campaign with me. Heck, most of the people I play MP with on a semi-regular basis haven't even touched the sp campaign.

@StrainedEyes: @wardcleaver: Really? I went through most of the co-op with random people and that worked out fine, didn't take very long either and was fun.

Unlocking things as I play is one of the larger reasons I continue to play the game, I don't play enough or have enough friends that play to warrant me playing once I'd have bought some/all of the unlocks I think.

@Arker101 said:

Remember those hours it took to unlock those Jet perks? Now every scrub will have them.

But they will still suck, and you have the training to take them out.

@OfficerMeatbeef said:

When I need somebody to put out a SOFLAM so I can kill the helicopter raining hell down upon our point from outside Stinger range and none of the scouts around have one because they haven't unlocked it yet, I don't think "wow, what a bunch of useless noobs!", I think "goddamn the developers for putting this important piece of equipment behind a pointless point wall". I do not care what rank someone is or whether they've "earned" their shit. I just want to be able to know that in a given situation, people actually at least have the access to what we need to get out of it.

Recons will never put down a soflam even if they have it.

anything to get people to pay more. meanwhile, EA is doing everything it can to cut back on it's cost's. pretty soon they will stop shipping games with the manuals inside the case...oh wait...

@OfficerMeatbeef: Yeah i hate the unlock system in BF3 as well, when i bought a Premium membership i saw i had the option to buy the Ultimate Shortcut kit for $20, unfortunate i'd feel the need to pay extra for what was readily available in BF2 but $20 to eliminate my hatred for the unlocking system didn't sound too unreasonable at the time, but, for whatever reason, the discount didn't apply for me. i don't know if it's because you had to buy it in the same order as your Premium or if i just coincidentally missed out on the deal within seconds of their taking it down.

Eitherway, i kinda hate BF3 now because of that incident...now every time i play i'm still thinking about my unlock proficiency and it's just frustrating. I'd rather just play the game for the sake of playing the game but every time i force myself into a position just because it's an opportunity to increase it's "level" is just super obnoxious.