Microtransactions Don't Belong in a Single Player Game, Says The Witcher Dev

The cynic in me wants to doubt this article for greed related reasons, partly related to the date. But the Witcher guys are one of the best studios out there for not gouging the players.

And marketing scams don't belong in advertisement campaigns, and we've seen how that went.

I believe I'm right in saying, @LiamCroft, that Capcom are currently running a questionnaire in which one of the question is how much are you prepared to pay for DLC. The price ranges from £10/$10 to £50/$50...

I've been playing Dragon's Dogma for a couple of days only, but have not seen any of those transactions, to be honest. The game itself has so much content and provides such a nice sense of exploration, that I am almost drown in it. And I am perfectly fine with an ability to buy some of in-game items, if there is no multiplayer aspect in the game (in order not to give someone uneven advantage) and all the items from the store can be
acquired without paying additional money for them.

Though I doubt that those reputation risks are worth a couple of players, who will be willing to buy some shards or whatever else can be bought in DD2.

Ubisoft builds their crappy games around MTX and nobody bats an eye. They're drawn out, empty worlds with repetitive excuse for some game design on top of garbage gameplay to waste as much of your time as possible and steer you to quick MTX solutions.

Meanwhile DD2 is a good game in contrast, but it has MTX so everyone loses their shiiit.

But yeah, no place in single player games. Very telling that CDPR has made better games than all of the above. Even 2077 is better on launch than anything Ubisoft has released in the past decade

I been playing video games since the 1980s and i never bought microtransactions.its not a place for even muliplayer.im the best at video games.i dont need a boost i get good.word up son

The only scenario that I can get behind them is in free-to-play games. But even then, I feel like they can become exploitative, which is why I just avoid F2P games. If a publisher wants to add some fully optional or cosmetic MTX in order to keep a game’s price down then that’s okay in theory, but too often it becomes a temptation to still charge full price for the base game, and then also have game altering MTX on top. The outcry against MTX has mostly kept publishers in check, but there seems to always be a push for them to add them later on.

I'm not a fan of mtx bit from my limited experience I find hoyo is fair about them.

@Specky
This actually isn't really the case. Take it from someone who is a massive Assassins Creed fan. I've played every main game in the series and not once have I ever felt pressured to buy any of the microtransactions. The one most people would point to is AC Odyssey with the XP booster but I platinumed that game without it and never really felt like a grind.

They also just did Prince of Persia which has no microtransactions at all outside of a couple dlc costumes with the deluxe edition.

Not saying Ubisoft is an angel or anything. Skull & Bones is on the other hand pretty bad with the microtransactions no doubt but I do think they get a bit of a unfair reputation when it comes to this topic. I've seen way worse examples than them in the industry.

Yeah, they also said you should not rush the game release before CP2077 was released so even if they are right they are in no position to lecture others.

Funny how they're now pretending their own, far bigger clusterf*ck never happened and that they're still in a position to farm goodwill from a high horse with these kinds of statements.

You're down in the gutter just like everyone else, CDPR. You've proved that extensively.

After everything they did they still think they can point and finger wag at other companies for nefarious stuff? I mean yeah micro transactions don't belong in paid single player games true it's disgusting but CDPR thinking they can act all righteous is laughable to say the least

The witcher dev should have also said that it would be nice if a single player game is shipped in a finished state at launch.

@Korgon
Buddy, Origins and Odyssee were such utterly disrespectful games to a player's time, I quit Odyssey. Origins I finished quickly while smashing enemies while on my horse riding circles as if it's Mario Kart. They're garbage games with garbage and drawn out lengths and garbage gameplay that doesn't even support the length of time you spend on them.
It's so clunky, boring and broken. Stupid NPC's that repeat the same lines as if it's an indie game, stupid accents, stupid scripts. No world building, no immersion, nothing.
They expect you to spend 100 hours in this mess? Yeah, not for me. Skipped Valhalla for that reason.
Same as Division 2. Which was more drawn out, more broken than the first one. Quit that game and threw the disc away. Don't want to torture anyone else with the crap.

Look at what a 40 dollar game like Helldivers 2 does. Now THAT'S how you do a third person shooter game that can actually support the hours you put into it.

I will NEVER understand gamers who damage control lazy, greedy publishers whose games deteriorate game after game.

@Keyblade-Dan I'm glad someone had the balls to say it...I've just about had it with all this talk about CDPR being untouchable and how they're practically the Second Coming 🙄🙂

@ironcrow86 Seriously I've just had enough of "Oh yeah man what an absolute redemption CDPR are the best after three years of being out they turned their broken piece of crap into somewhat what it should've been at launch what other Dev does that? They care so much they're best Dev in history" I'm so over it 😑

@Keyblade-Dan
Pretty much my thoughts. They may be right, but it just rubs me the wrong way when someone else does something that annoys gamers and CDPR has to come out with a big "we would never..." statement. They did this pretty frequently before Cyberpunk and it annoyed me then, now after their own disaster it feels extra wrong.

CD Projekt RED judging people after Cyberpunk is hilarious.

@Specky
I wasn't really talking about the quality of the games themselves (Although I respectfully disagree with your opinion on the quality of those two games but that's beside the point).

I'm just saying I disagree with the notion that all of their games are designed around selling people microtransactions. And I wouldn't say that I'm doing "damage control" for them. I said they are no angel and Skull & Bones is a example of them going over the line with MTX. I'm just saying when you have companies like Sega locking New Game Plus behind a $20 paywall for Infinite Wealth I don't get why Ubisoft is the 1st company people jump on when the majority of their MTX is horse armor. 😄

Didn’t the Witcher 3 have horse armor to buy ??

@Specky

"Very telling that CDPR has made better games than all of the above. Even 2077 is better on launch than anything Ubisoft has released in the past decade"

Um, no. 2077 was a broken mess of a game at launch. At least on console.

Meanwhile, Ubisoft published high-quality games like Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, both Mario + Rabbids games, South Park: The Stick of Truth (not developed by Ubi, but published by them), Trials Rising, Child of Light, etc. I don't recall any of those launching with game-breaking bugs or terrible optimization on their target platforms.

Ubisoft isn't JUST AssCreed and Far Cry.

Personally I’d rather worry about having a playable game vs some non intrusive microtransactions (and DD has been playable for me on series x vs cyberpunk at launch and several years after).

I don’t know how it works on PlayStation but I have to exit to the MS store to even see the transactions. I bought the deluxe edition and I was playing for 2 hours before I realized I didn’t install dlc I bought. I literally didn’t notice. I’m not saying that such monetization can’t be abused but all the the DD2 dlc is designed to allow the player to make the game easier without impacting the actual game difficulty.

That’s why they released the character creator prior to release. How you build your characters has a direct impact on the game (movement speed, reach, stamina, carry weight, race) which is why you can’t change them easily. The game is designed to make fast travel scarce which is why you have limited port crystals (and have to play through more than once to get the max). Which is also why the non instant fast travel has a failure rate.

The game is supposed to be hard/punishing which is why wakestones aren’t prevalent before the post dragon game (granted you still stumble over them everywhere). But some folks don’t have time or want to spend that much time, so you can buy the same items you can find/buy in game if you want to speed things up. But somebody buying 99 wakestones isn’t gonna impact the online aspect of the game (everybody keeps forgetting DD isn’t a purely offline experience and requires online interaction heavily unless you solo as even capcom pawns are traded by players) short of allowing them to level fast which means I can’t afford their pawn. Even buying rift crystals has a risk because you could get a plague pawn.

There are few games that allow the player to inadvertently set the difficulty like DD. When I played the first game on 360 I had a friend that had a maxed out pawn. That made the game easier until I was around level 30 and I still died several times. The game was still designed to accommodate having a “boost” and that’s before the adaptive difficulty in the current game. Honestly anyone complaining about dlc in this game either hasn’t played it or is against dlc.

You wanna talk predatory capcom dlc? Azura’s wrath. Nuff said. Either way Cyberpunk devs need to go sit down somewhere.

You know what else doesn't belong in a single player AAA game?

Abysmal/garbage combat.

Looking at you, The Witcher series.

For most single player games I think there is a purist bunch that wants things initially untouched. No data mined info, no major exploits, no micro transactions.

Then there’s those players that would like to play a game but don’t have the time to grind for things. Though I’m against most mtxs other than cosmetics that don’t effect gameplay, I would be less opposed to mtx saayyyy 3-6 months after a game launched.

I get these devs need to make $$ as the price of a game hasn’t gone up to cover the cost of production and cost of living nowadays.

I used to love when CDPR made snarky comments about other devs being greedy, but that doesn’t fly anymore, not after the Cyberpunk 2077 release. Especially when they’re hinting at Capcom, who have been releasing banger after banger since around 2017.

I’d rather microtransactions than launches like cyberpunk, waiting two years for only a fraction of the promised content and the game to be playable. Controversial take perhaps, but do your job and whatever money you make is earned.

As long as they're like in Assassin's Creed where you can complete EVERYTHING without really needing them, I don't mind.
If it's "hey, you need to pay to have another character", yeah, that's BS.

Micro transactions are perfectly fine if they don't change how the game plays and you're not "forced" to buy them.

Unless it's pay to win in a multiplayer game or I don't really have a problem with microtransactions. Not like I'm forced to buy them, so I don't really care

Still wondering why DD2 has ferrystones as you can buy them from merchants and find them everywhere. Have too many wakestones.

Sorry guys, but it seems that Larian has adopted your old role of industry good guy. Best to keep your head down, let your games do the talking, & remember the good times.

I agree as to me it just breaks the flow. Why MTX cosmetics, why boosters to XP levels. Why much more. Just balance it. Then again if it's $70 US or equivalent in your currency/region then yeah it's a bit much.

If it's free to play then sure it makes sense they have to make money somehow. But I just buy particular games. I change the difficulty, get good or just try the game at a different time/know it's not for me. There is tons of games out there to try after all not all of them are going to hit for me.

While I'm not hours to play picky I do think that for the hours the filler/quality can be a factor but to me as gameplay picky the quests/minigames can be whatever and if good enough sure but as most open worlds offer quests I don't care for then yeah to me the gameplay side of things means I'm not likely to pick them up.

After enough engine tweaks of the AI, quest design, level design and more then sure but that's gens away at this rate of how devs are going and oh the visuals, snore no thanks and with old gen still being supported (I am still on yes) but the thing is we don't see it on current gen only anyway still because they need releases to be out it's just an annoying cycle. I don't see games trying hard enough, just refining PS3/360 era games 2 gens later.

Why should I be excited gimmicky or actually trying if I don't even see any of it trying to impress. PS4/Xbox One I can let pass from the hardware jump there but now there is no excuse other than yes tweaking engines to the hardware, 4K textures and this and that to get ready of releases line up in such a way beside buying up companies all the time and we get less releases, less in-between releases we could have besides Indies as the AAs or As are gone besides the few left and the gens get more boring.

Some improvements happened in PS4/Xbox One but we either had those dropped because they stopped trying to impress us or didn't actually try that much so to me hardware wise games aren't as compelling to justify MTX as they are a full price tag either. The scale of the worlds is one thing the execution of the quests, the world design, the AI, the dialogue, the immersion of the NPCs lives, the personality that many games aren't pushing for, being similar of game design gen to gen and less appealing touches I get from old gen and go oh yeah that doesn't happen now isn't compelling for the price.

If I can go back to Black 2006 on PS2/Xbox and go whoa even if overdone or other games with their own details of particles, breakability, dynamic then too in your face gameified aspects or just elements we should see of mechanics and world design come back why is it I keep finding them in old gen not new gen.

That or just better marketing (I am fine with prototypes but people want CGI because people don't like alphas, some customers make it worse then what we may want to see then lying to us to sell a product but Indies don't have that budget so they show what they can), better development time management and more if studios get offered that then Indie or Publisher shareholders/directors or producers making things a challenge.

I mean technically the same could be said to not have MTX at all but I understand with maintain servers or getting multiplayer players interested in cosmetics, leveling and more.

In singleplayer isn't the case as much if it's a short game or a long RPG/open world and no co-op then yeah it's a bit awkward and trying to fit MTX in with certain systems, it's just annoying and ruins the experience.

@BeerIsAwesome Well atleast thet didn't sell a broken game a release with full knowledge that it was broken with fake marketing.

@optic_efun11 Thats the issue microtransactions change the game DD2 no normal fast travel but we will sell you a option to get one.

@Flaming_Kaiser Remember:

Cyberpunk, The Witcher 3 = Expertly crafted works of art. Considered amongst the greatest games ever made.

Days Gone = Horrible, bug filled mess.

On the countrary, singleplayer doesnt harm anybody if you have an exp multiplier or whatever, but multiplayer affects everybody else.

@Bolverkr get good bruh

@Flaming_Kaiser oof, yea that is def cringe then. If it's like cosmetic stuff that's cool, but locking basic features behind a paywall is a bad look!

@pirlega I am good bruh

The combat is still dog feces regardless lol

@Bolverkr the monkey that can‘t dance blames it on the earth being uneven

@PerpetualBoredom Well said.

@BeerIsAwesome So why you bring up Days Gone is beyond did i mention it? Looking at something more objective would be something good for you?

@Flaming_Kaiser Name a bug-ridden game out there that got hated and reviled, because there's a fair few. Anyhow, my original comment wasn't so much the unfinished games, but rather that they don't have the time saves and the show all collectibles on the map kind of price gouging that someone like Ubisoft is pretty adept at.