I hate EA and they're evil, but I think they did the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer right re: microtransactions. To unlock new characters, weapons, upgrades etc you need to buy packs - they give you a random assortment of each depending on what they're called and their price (i.e. expensive character pack has high chance for rare characters) - you can buy them if you want but you get credits to buy them in-game from playing matches well, so it's fair. Higher difficulty matches get you a shitload more credits for example.
Man I want to play it now
Thats the problem though.
Microtransaction games universally offer a method to buy the items you want with IRL cash or free in game credit you earn. Thats nothing new.
The problem is that they have to scale the free credits proportionally to the Cash shop.
Why buy a exp/credit boost if its not that bad to grind it out yourself by playing? So they do one of two things
A) Scale down how much in game currency you earn per match.
B) Scale up how much in game items cost with the free currency.
The worst part is that a lot of these games dont simply choose A or B, they do both. On top of all of this these games
are not free.
Games like League of Legends, Planet side 2, Blacklight Retribution get away with this because you dont have to drop 60$ to play the game you can play it 100% for free but ofcourse theres always incentives to buy exp, and currency boosts (or flat out items/characters). Thats fine and dandy though because server costs arent free and they are not getting a free 60$ to begin with.
Microtransactions always tip the scale in favor of the microtransactions, the house always win and the player always loses.
Just look at the trends GT and Forza were universally less "grindy" in there older counterparts and the cash shops werent as pricey.
Now all of a sudden the cash shops amp up there reach and then they have the crass to also scale back how much you earn in game for free.
There is absolutely nothing fair about microtransactions in games that are not free.
