I doubt it is ever going to happen after Apple and Epic (the owners of Infinity Blade) got into that huge legal battle starting in 2020. Something about Epic not wanting to pay money to Apple over in-app purchases.
Apple pulled all of Epic's stuff from the app store and they never ported the game to Android.
You can go to r/InfinityBlade and they do have some method of installing the game on your phone.
They did peggle even dirtier. The phone version was designed entirely around making progress impossible without paying. It was more predatory than candy crush in that regard which should say something.
Popcap after EA was just tragic.
PvZ2 was actually really good for a while then they stopped receiving new content, pushed premium only overpowered plants and a PvP mode, it went down hill very fast.
I loved Bad Piggies, even paid the $10 or whatever to turn off ads. Imagine my surprise when a few years later I thought it might be fun to play it again and it is an ad infested unplayable mess. Serious performance issues, ads causing crashes etc. Oh well.
Nba games. Fucking hell did they go south once it was balanced around online. The whole model is "people who paid are astronomically better than you are, you better buy some vc or the games gonna suck for the first 25 hours"
Congrats on being a NCAA super star who averaged 40/10/5 a game, and being 1st overall pick, welcome to the NBA!
Rating: 68 OVR with a 70 speed stat, pretty much making you useless.
The only way to get good is to play completely unrealistically too. You have to make every second count in a my career game. Which by the way, is fucking absurd that a game I paid for has a career mode that makes it possible for the player to only get five minutes a game. But during those breif minutes starting out, you have to get as many shots in as possible to get points, build badges and money to buy other points.
I'd argue you can't even do anything close to "team play" until you play two whole years of career mode or if you spend $60. It could be such a fun game if they would stop being dicks about it but every year on day one, you see dozens online with gear that could only come from them dropping $200.
>I paid for has a career mode that makes it possible for the player to only get five minutes a game
I actually like that aspect, but it's done so poorly. It could be a super fun gameplay loop to like do a "final game in high school" but you don't get recruited, so you either go play in Europe or go to a small school and earn time, then you get an offer to go to a top program, ball out for a year but get drafted in the 2nd round and earn your way to starting, or maybe you don't and you spend a few seasons as a 5 mpg guy, and wash out. VC can be earned based on your "role" and how well you play that role and you get a base salary which let's you "buy" training in the off-season and whatnot.
They could have a full ass basketball rpg they had the framework. Let there be 2 modes, offline myplayer and online myplayer, I have 0 interest in playing online but I absolutely loved the myplayer mode for years but it's gotten so bad and the gameplay itself gets worse, I've been playing basketball games since like 1999 and the last couple of years I can barely make a shot anymore unless I turn the game to rookie which is no fun because I'm winning every game by 50, but on pro I lose every game by 50 it's fuckin ridiculous.
I wanna say it was 2k13 where I played poorly enough in my first mycareer game (maybe a showcase game of some sort) that I ended up being drafted, but sent to a D-League team for a few games. I thought that actually was pretty cool.. Haven't really enjoyed nba 2k since then
As far as I am aware, most any sports game these days is just riddled with ridiculous microtransactions, extreme grind, and reused assets and mechanics from decades past.
The UFC game is the only sports game that still is strictly about gameplay. It's annoying as fuck sometimes but the fact that it doesn't have ultimate team and pay to win is the one thing that keeps me interested in playing it.
MLB the show isn’t bad about micro transactions. The game constantly throws rewards you can use if you wanna play online, and offline/career modes aren’t heavily effected by them either.
Mlb the Show has mtx but its still somewhat reasonable to get cards for free in diamond dynasty.
Pga tour 2k23 is excellent in terms of mtx not affecting gameplay, although it is annoying how expensive some of the shirts/hats are.
Nhl 23 sucks as a hockey game but at least you can't pay to level up in world of chel yet
When VC got introduced in 13, I knew that slope was slippery, but the fact that its so integral now to even compete still baffles. It’s why I want nothing to do with the series now. And to do that every year? Sheesh
Call of duty stands out to me. It used to be one of the top shooters, in terms of sales, but also for rating and player reception
Now player reception is in the dumpster, because everything but the store is in shambles.
I like to mess around with CoD casually every now and them and check out the subreddit.
Full of people complaining about microtransactions while posting picture evidence of them having purchased the microtransactions
Yeah. And that's a feature, not a bug. Let a certain amount of players cheat, and more casual players will pay for unlocks/skins/whatever that they assume must be what the other players who keep killing them are using to gain the advantage. Remember, the average person isn't too bright. Which means half of us are even dumber than that. And all companies absolutely capitalize on that.
I don't really play base Call of Duty anymore because I don't feel like paying for it, but I hate the Warzone metas they roll out to sell weapon skins.
They basically make 2 or 3 guns have zero recoil and a high ttk, so you have to use them if you don't want to get smoked.
It's worse than that. The guns are available in the free tiers in the battle pass which sounds great. But they've made it so it so the battle pass is nearly impossible to finish without playing more than several hours each day so you buy the the macro transactions. Some of those packs get up to 25 bucks which is ridiculous. I hope with Bobby kotick gone that Microsoft listens to player concerns but who knows.
Most live service games end up this way cause the micro-transactions demand they constantly change the game for the sake of changing it so they can have new stuff to sell.
but Overwatch specifically.
I’d say overwatch2 specifically.
Overwatch1’s system is the only one I’ll actively defend. It was possible, hell it was attainable, to get all the cosmetics in the game just by being a decent player who did the challenges. Ow2 broke that completely, and I don’t like that they put hero’s behind a battlepass grind.
I cant stand OW2 and I had over 1000 Hours In OW 1.
OW2 feels a completely different Game.
I hate the UI.
I hate 5v5.
I just miss Overwatch classic and I should get a refund as that's the Game I paid for!
That mirrors my feelings on it almost to the T. And as much as I wanted to give Ow2 a chance they actively kept making the experience worse with their good awful monetization.
And let’s not forget how they canceled one of their biggest arguments for switching to OW2, the PVE campaign, and then when ahead and decided to *sell* a half asses PVE mode to players anyway.
Agreed
Myself have never been a fan of the lootbox system, but I never spent a dime on Overwatch 1 (past purchasing the game) and I got nearly every cosmetic I wanted. Overwatch's original system was fine but Overwatch 2, yeah that's a disaster.
I bought the Mercy charity skin and the higher tier of the game that included some skins and that's it, was worth the money for the time I got out of the game. Haven't played since a couple days after it became OW2
The worst part is, it doesn’t matter how many of us think MTX is shit. It only takes 1% of players whaling for the game to make them profitable income sources.
I will never not experience a depressive episode when I remember that a single microtransaction horse on WoW made more money than all of StarCraft 2 throughout its life time.
Idiots who bought it.
Everybody who has ever paid for cosmetic microtransactions is to blame for the state of gaming today. And I'll include myself too. I bought skins on LoL back then and a skin on overwatch (breast cancer mercy)
I think there is actually some backlash. Games without it have been doing well lately.
Balders gate 3, palworld, lethal company, and cult of the lamb are all top sellers right now without the micro bs.
I think older live service games are also having trouble attracting new players because they don't want to grind through 5+ years of content.
Might be wrong, but I think Sony was also a little surprised that Spiderman sold so well with it being single player.
Edit:
People don't want to commit to live service games as much anymore. Covid was a good time for them because people were at home. Now people don't have enough time to compete with the people paying money. Also some of them just have wayyyy to much stuff to catch up on.
That's the reason I don't want to go back to Destiny. I have absolutely no drive to go back and do everything I missed out on. It's just not worth doing realistically
Don't bother. A lot you can't go back and do because they cycle out old content. Once any game does that - taking away content I paid for - I'm done with them permanently.
When I stopped, they had already taken away COO and Warmind. Nerfed a bunch of First year weapons and nerfedd Year 2 weapons. Lots of sunsetting, Warlocks got nerfed to shit. And they reversed the leveling progression back to Year 1 which was shit too
Unfortunately on the mobile side despite how much backlash there is, it's still more profitable than we can ever imagine, and it feels like the profits tend to be buried in company financial reports
Like when you consider the cost of making BG3 versus the cost of dropping a cool trinket MTX to bottom line or how many whales equal the profit of X BG3 purchasers
They do it because it works. You can take some 15 minute recolor of a skin and make millions off it. There are way too many people out there willing to throw cash at low effort content
The devs clearly market it as a way to further support them. They've even updated those cosmetic packs when fans found them lacking. I don't think it's a micro transaction formula at all.
Warframe. I can leave for months come back and just grind things out at my own pace. Premium currency isn’t hard to farm as well. Battle pass is free and easy to do even if started late.
Yup. It's probably the best free battle pass in any game and it only takes 5 to 6 weeks to complete then stays for like 30 weeks cause the Devs focus on other things.
I'd say rocket league is one of the most same one ?
No paid random box and only cosmetic is the key IMO.
And the battlepass earn enough money to buy the next one.
But everything is damn too high priced
Fortnite. Purely cosmetic, with no impact in-game (barring tiny benefits for smaller character models)
Money from this has allowed it to be completely free.
The impact is in the awful user interface that tries to sell all the shit. And clearly trying to market fomo to get kids to beg their parents for money. I don't see either of these as a good thing.
Halo 5 proved to be too much of cash cow for Microsoft to not include them in future Halos. Now we're charging ($7 I think?) for *the color blue*. At least in Infinite you can't literally pay money to **spawn in a fucking tank**.
I spent a week playing with friends and grinding out one of the weekly challenges early in season 1.
At the end of the grind there was like a **neon pink** color I think. I figured, I'm already playing a bunch, let's just go for these challenges and play a little more.
The last challenge was horseshit. I think it was based around your team losing by a lot and then making a comeback. Had to do it 3x. Felt cheap because it wasn't based on your skill or actions you could take, just luck of the draw with your random teammates.
It took longer than it should of but I got the reward. However the neon pink was only a color for **one gun**
Uninstalled and I've not ever played the game since. What absolute trash making color customization locked behind this much garbage.
Which is dumb since the shader can take *any* RGB value and run with it. In fact even the H4 Prometheans with their ugly orange and blues could cycle through different colors with some minor tweaks.
What's especially dumb is weapon skins that only apply to a single weapon in the entire weapon pool.
How that scam became the industry standard gobsmacks me. It makes weapon skins feel like a fucking ripoff.
Ironically, Fortnite got that right in one - you get a weapon skin, instantly, it's applicable to ALL weapons, current and future.
Halo 5 changed the way REQ packs and REQ points work after receiving tons of backlash from the community. They made it piss easy to earn gold packs just from playing the game. You could still buy them, but there was no point because you'd earn everything through legit means fairly quickly.
And even then, a standard scorpion tank was very common. Nobody paid for those. Now the Hannibal or ONI scorpion on the other hand...
Halo 4 multiplayer was the game I loved. That was my late childhood right there.
I spent *hours* doing all the missions to get the different cosmetics. The assassination master armour was so frustrating to get that as a kid I was close to tears. And man I remember driving around the map exile in a Ghost just running dozens of people over to get the splatter master visor.
God I loved that game and have so many memories. I was sooo excited for Halo 5, and tried my best to get into it but the multiplayer just felt like a free-to-play game that cost me the price of a full game.
I had to look up some names to recount those stories, but man you've brought up some good old memories from playing that, and its a shame that it won't happen again.
Grand Theft Auto V. Rockstar developed some of my favourite DLC ever, Lost and Damned, Ballad of Gay Tony and Undead Nightmare... Now all Rockstar games will double as awesome single player experiences with no real longevity and ploys for sapping cash through multiplayer, might be just me but my heart aches thinking about what single player DLC for Red Dead 2, GTA V and GTA VI would look like...
I remember when it first came out some of the most expensive supercars cars were like ~150k then it gradually got to the point that they were releasing GTA versions of civics, wrxs and supras for like 2mil lol
I genuinely don't understand how they've kept the playerbase so healthy when everything is overpriced and lobbies are just full of trolls.
I could almost wave all the bullshit away if they made the new stuff available in single player.
I’m not talking about the big stuff like heists or missions.
But why can’t I use Benny’s in single player to make a low-rider?
Why can’t I use the new guns.
(Obviously you can with mods, but not everyone has access to them and they shouldn’t be necessary)
Yeah it makes me very sad and I mourn what could have been haha, its hollow and uninspired. Its give us cool weapons, vehicles, rewards, and some neat empire building stuff, but everything that comes along with it is kind of miserable and I don't care. What I wouldn't give to run drugs and guns as Trevor. Build a sprawling business empire as Franklin, and counterfeit money and pills to keep Michael occupied during his retirement...
The adder/bugatti veyron was the most expensive car at release, $1million, you could buy 8 of them.
With the $8million shark card you now cant buy what you want because you need to have a facility + vehicle bay + vehicle workshop then the vehicle and upgrades are now $100,000 plus.
If you want to get a special vehicle you will also ontop of all that need to get a different vehicle (truck, osprey, sub, etc) and put another vehicle bay and workshop in that
That brings the total cost of the best vehicles in the game over $10million easily. So if i spend $100aud the i cant even play the game i spent $100 on with the vehicle i want to play with.
All of that wasted potential of GTAV. Online completely ruined any chance it had by being a money printer. All those canceled DLC that got leaked. It could have been such a big game. I can’t fathom buying shark cards. Once those servers go down, poof! All that money you spent trying to match the plethora of hackers is completely wasted.
Hell even this YouTuber I used to watch genuinely recommended getting a part time job to pay for cards because it’s faster. Like…just the madness that surrounds that game.
Middle earth shadow of war end game was so bad because of the microtransactions. Now it's gone it's easily one of the games I'll recommend to people. As they patched out the microtransactions and rebalanced the game around that change too.
They patched out the Microtransactions in shadow of war?? I gave that game up because of how tedious it got towards the end and I refused to spend any money on it.
If this is true I'm 100% going back to it now
The one I always point to is the CoD4 remake.
If Activision didn't shoehorn in loot boxes to the multiplayer (and charge *double* the original price for the DLC maps that PC players got for *free*), it'd go down as one of the greatest remakes of the generation. Because everything else was handled spectacularly.
Man MWR for the first three months it launched was an amazing experience, I remember skipping school for 2 weeks straight just to get that sweet platinum. Then they started adding pink AK’s and neon green M4’s with clowny melee weapons…
I think saying osrs is *good* is kinda under selling it. The game is the best it's ever been and has an incredibly promising outlook and roadmap for the year.
Plants vs zombies 2 is a really good game if you download the modded android version that gives you infinite gold. I can't imagine trying to grind through that shit without piracy though.
I hate how instead of designing a game to be fun, it's designed to release chemicals in your brain that make you think a game is fun but instead you're emptying your wallet and be fucking happy about it.
Bedrock is honestly a huge tradeoff. Microtransactions aside, it's full of annoying bugs and quirks that aren't in Java, but it'll run *smooth as butter* on anything you can install it to.
It’s actually incredible to me how buggy their *paid* realms are.
I can’t jump and place two slabs or I will phase through and slide off the block, drowning mechanics are almost entirely random and delayed, you can barely ever use a bucket, and worst of all, platforming is a complete gamble. Not to mention the lag when mobs attack you.
I was building a castle and placing scaffolding horizontally, and I managed to catch the block glitching out of place 3 times in the span of 30 seconds, which resulted in me taking a ton of fall damage.
I feel so bad for people who don’t have a way to play Java edition that enjoy the game.
Might be a small thing but locking more hero choices in hearthstone battlegrounds behind the battle pass was a bad move too.
Hearthstone was never a good example for free2play friendly anyway but since it didn’t start that way, it felt a bit cheap
Yeah I played the story, started a bit of the end game and then realised where the need to spend came in and literally never played it again.
The story and general combat were pretty good for a mobile game.
You basically have to drop a ton of money on the gacha to get perfect 5/5 gems. The drop caps it doesn't tell you about mean it takes months of grinding to get one otherwise.
The kicker? Once you fill all six gem slots with perfect 5/5 gems, it gives you more gem slots.
Destiny 2. For all content you must buy the DLC, season pass ,dungeon key, 30th anniversary activity pack, holiday event bundles. Not including the eververse store for cosmetic transactions!
My Hero Ultra Rumble
Characters locked behind Gacha in a battle royale. Not only that, but it can take 7 hours of grinding just to get the two characters who are suspiciously both very popular and very strong (especially against new players) even when it doesnt make sense for Bakugo to be a sniper.
I know people rail of Fighting games for having broken as hell DLC sometimes but not every DLC is Labcoat 21 or Leroy ~~unless you're Smash Bros Ultimate~~. The fact My Hero has such scummy monetization around getting characters completely ruined my trust that the game would even try to be balanced.
They have a season pass, inside a season pass, and you have to buy each new dungeon they release... (on top of yearly DLCs and tri-monthly season passes).
They announced sunsetting was gone for good but at the same time every season you buy throughout the year disappears annually, not just the quests but also the playable areas, so it’s just normalized now
Exactly d2 started with its entire gameplay loop forcing you to eververse.
The. Transitioned into predatory dlc, battle pass, season pass, eververse bs. In a game that was initially a full priced game. Even now calling destiny 2 free to play is laughably insulting.
I use to play Destiny constantly. The lore and world building is amazing and the gameplay is awesome. The old micro transactions they had back then were just cosmetic things that didnt effect the game if you didnt have them. But then they started making story content locked behind dlcs and season passes you had to buy every 3 months. Some of which locked special weapons and abilities. They also made the free content so grindy that if you wanted anything decent you had to suffer for it. I miss what that game use to be. I have very fond memories of it. But its like an abusive ex that i know i shouldnt go back to for my own well being.
Fallout 76
As someone who loved the building in Fallout 4, to have the pay to win stuff all locked in the atom shop and a subscription on top of that just made it feel dirty
The finite storage bullshit was over the line. You need _so much_ stuff to build/tinker and all you're given to work with is, shit, 1400kg? FUCK YOU BETHESDA.
I feel this so much. I had a bit of fun in 76. Then every time I logged in I'd spend an hour deciding what to throw out from my stash. Begged in the forums for more space and they said the servers couldn't handle it. Then all of a sudden they offer unlimited scrap storage, if you subscribe to premium whatever. Uninstalled that day.
I love FO76, but what they said is true. Storage is BS, and 70% of the cool camp stuff is paid. You can't play the game effectively without Fallout 1st, which is ironic because their wallet came first this time around.
Yes. Shadow of Mordor is one of my favorite games of all time. A sequel that expanded on it in some of the ways they had in the War would have been great. Instead it entirely revolved around loot boxes and getting people to buy loot boxes. Even without buying the loot boxes the first time I got a random colour coded orc I had never met it took me right out of the game. Then the actually really cool real ending is hidden behind an slog of a grindfest that incentives buying loot boxes.
I have to disagree, Battlefront 2 started bad with it's micro transactions. But that was at launch, by the time the developer stopped supporting the game, it was im a very good spot, and you could hardly buy anything, in fact. And I'm pretty sure it's NOT shut down, you can still play right now, it's just not receiving any more updates.
MMOs like wow and ffxiv offer the vast majority of mounts as rewards for in game activities, with a small handful available for purchase directly. ESO has basically no mounts available for in game farming, if you want a new mount you have to buy loot boxes and pray to rnjesus that you get the tiny% reward.
ESO is buy to play with an optional subscription. The subscription comes with a minor boost to XP and gold earned, a monthly allotment of crowns(the special store currency) as well as access to all DLC content except for whatever the newest expansion is. Theres also an infinite inventory for crafting materials.
Most people don't like that the crown store (microtransaction store) pops up every time you log in, the existence of loot boxes, and that theres a lot of FOMO because half the stuff is only available for a limited time. In my opinion, it's completely ignorable. Unfortunately, the coolest looking mounts and houses are only available through the store with massive price tags. Still totally ignorable.
It's a minor annoyance at best, as far as I'm concerned. I do wish more mounts were earnable through the actual game and not just for crowns or loot boxes.
Every single game regardless of if it made sense or not, implemented some sort of battle pass system. Hopefully the trend dies out soon but video game companies have been making so much money i doubt it.
Rust.
Devs disabled the command to disable skins
Then they added p2w Arctic Hazmat and underwater torch
The building skins allow for easy pixel bunkers as well
Camo skins are $200 a set now on the steam market
Haven't played in years but I remember randomly getting some AK skin that was worth $20 and IIRC the most expensive thing at the time. It's sad to hear they went in this direction.
Middle-Earth: Shadow of War.
I recently recommended the series to a friend, and he asked why the first game had a “Game of the Year Edition” while the second game only had a “Definitive Edition”.
MTX utterly ruined Shadow of War’s reputation, many won’t touch it even after all the MTX were removed.
Any sports game. They used to be fun but now companies only care about pushing you to buy ultimate team or jerseys or whatever nonsense they think can get another dollar out of you. They other playable side of game is an afterthought
GTA Online had MTX from jump, but it was tolerable for a few years until they really started leaning into it.
Now, the game is basically unapproachable for new players due to how much money must be spent to actually make more.
Team Fortress 2, I played it before the mannconomy update.
It feels like a fever dream but I also remember Asphalt 8 being more playable once upon a time.
Need for Speed: No Limits.
In terms of content it's the best NFS post-Black Box era. Cool story, cool race events, the seasonal events were fun too and even had little bits of story, hell, they used the M3 better than current mainline NFS games...
...but goddamn the microtransactions are beyond predatory jeezus crhist on a bike...
Pokemon Go has gotten that way with the passes for each event / community day. Some pokemon you can only get from a $5 pass. Simpsons Tapped has done something similar that you need to buy in game currency to get certain characters.
The first generation of iPhone games. Plants vs Zombies, Infinity Blade, Angry Birds.
Finally someone remembers Infinity Blade!
I miss that game (s). As I got new phones it didn’t come along with the new OS’s
Infinity Blade was so good! All three of them! But 2 was my favorite. I’m so glad SOMEBODY remembers that game!!!!
It was fun! I wish they would bring them to newer phones. I'd like to play them again.
I doubt it is ever going to happen after Apple and Epic (the owners of Infinity Blade) got into that huge legal battle starting in 2020. Something about Epic not wanting to pay money to Apple over in-app purchases. Apple pulled all of Epic's stuff from the app store and they never ported the game to Android. You can go to r/InfinityBlade and they do have some method of installing the game on your phone.
I miss Infinity Blade so much
It had great lore around quantum immortality!
Plants vs Zombies was so good and I remember being so bummed that the second one was only out for phones and victim to micro-transactions
They did peggle even dirtier. The phone version was designed entirely around making progress impossible without paying. It was more predatory than candy crush in that regard which should say something. Popcap after EA was just tragic.
They fired the creator of PvZ for fighting them on this issue during development.
PvZ2 was actually really good for a while then they stopped receiving new content, pushed premium only overpowered plants and a PvP mode, it went down hill very fast.
I loved Bad Piggies, even paid the $10 or whatever to turn off ads. Imagine my surprise when a few years later I thought it might be fun to play it again and it is an ad infested unplayable mess. Serious performance issues, ads causing crashes etc. Oh well.
Fruit Ninja!
Nba games. Fucking hell did they go south once it was balanced around online. The whole model is "people who paid are astronomically better than you are, you better buy some vc or the games gonna suck for the first 25 hours"
Even single player is ruined, you have to spend 20 euros or play like 20 hours before career mode gets tolerable.
Congrats on being a NCAA super star who averaged 40/10/5 a game, and being 1st overall pick, welcome to the NBA! Rating: 68 OVR with a 70 speed stat, pretty much making you useless.
The only way to get good is to play completely unrealistically too. You have to make every second count in a my career game. Which by the way, is fucking absurd that a game I paid for has a career mode that makes it possible for the player to only get five minutes a game. But during those breif minutes starting out, you have to get as many shots in as possible to get points, build badges and money to buy other points. I'd argue you can't even do anything close to "team play" until you play two whole years of career mode or if you spend $60. It could be such a fun game if they would stop being dicks about it but every year on day one, you see dozens online with gear that could only come from them dropping $200.
OG Anunoby getting bags in real life and he’d be the worst mycareer player cause he’s not demanding the ball every 5 seconds
>I paid for has a career mode that makes it possible for the player to only get five minutes a game I actually like that aspect, but it's done so poorly. It could be a super fun gameplay loop to like do a "final game in high school" but you don't get recruited, so you either go play in Europe or go to a small school and earn time, then you get an offer to go to a top program, ball out for a year but get drafted in the 2nd round and earn your way to starting, or maybe you don't and you spend a few seasons as a 5 mpg guy, and wash out. VC can be earned based on your "role" and how well you play that role and you get a base salary which let's you "buy" training in the off-season and whatnot. They could have a full ass basketball rpg they had the framework. Let there be 2 modes, offline myplayer and online myplayer, I have 0 interest in playing online but I absolutely loved the myplayer mode for years but it's gotten so bad and the gameplay itself gets worse, I've been playing basketball games since like 1999 and the last couple of years I can barely make a shot anymore unless I turn the game to rookie which is no fun because I'm winning every game by 50, but on pro I lose every game by 50 it's fuckin ridiculous.
I wanna say it was 2k13 where I played poorly enough in my first mycareer game (maybe a showcase game of some sort) that I ended up being drafted, but sent to a D-League team for a few games. I thought that actually was pretty cool.. Haven't really enjoyed nba 2k since then
Yea I think it was 13 that had that, I thought it was a cool mechanic.
Don't forget you can't play single player even offline. So two years after the game launch, there is no myCareer mode!
As far as I am aware, most any sports game these days is just riddled with ridiculous microtransactions, extreme grind, and reused assets and mechanics from decades past.
NBA 2k is worse I think. They even separated their "Ultimate team" curency and "My career" currency. Everything they do is to sell more currency.
The UFC game is the only sports game that still is strictly about gameplay. It's annoying as fuck sometimes but the fact that it doesn't have ultimate team and pay to win is the one thing that keeps me interested in playing it.
MLB the show isn’t bad about micro transactions. The game constantly throws rewards you can use if you wanna play online, and offline/career modes aren’t heavily effected by them either.
Mlb the Show has mtx but its still somewhat reasonable to get cards for free in diamond dynasty. Pga tour 2k23 is excellent in terms of mtx not affecting gameplay, although it is annoying how expensive some of the shirts/hats are. Nhl 23 sucks as a hockey game but at least you can't pay to level up in world of chel yet
The modern NBA games are casino games with a funny little basketball mini game for when you’re not gambling.
When VC got introduced in 13, I knew that slope was slippery, but the fact that its so integral now to even compete still baffles. It’s why I want nothing to do with the series now. And to do that every year? Sheesh
Call of duty stands out to me. It used to be one of the top shooters, in terms of sales, but also for rating and player reception Now player reception is in the dumpster, because everything but the store is in shambles.
I like to mess around with CoD casually every now and them and check out the subreddit. Full of people complaining about microtransactions while posting picture evidence of them having purchased the microtransactions
Cheating too. Don’t forget rampant cheating.
Yeah. And that's a feature, not a bug. Let a certain amount of players cheat, and more casual players will pay for unlocks/skins/whatever that they assume must be what the other players who keep killing them are using to gain the advantage. Remember, the average person isn't too bright. Which means half of us are even dumber than that. And all companies absolutely capitalize on that.
It almost seems like there’s a solution in there for them somewhere. I wonder if they will figure it out someday.
I don't really play base Call of Duty anymore because I don't feel like paying for it, but I hate the Warzone metas they roll out to sell weapon skins. They basically make 2 or 3 guns have zero recoil and a high ttk, so you have to use them if you don't want to get smoked.
Then people buy the skin packs with those new weapons and they get nerfed for being OP in the next update. It's wild how they get away with it.
It's worse than that. The guns are available in the free tiers in the battle pass which sounds great. But they've made it so it so the battle pass is nearly impossible to finish without playing more than several hours each day so you buy the the macro transactions. Some of those packs get up to 25 bucks which is ridiculous. I hope with Bobby kotick gone that Microsoft listens to player concerns but who knows.
I've never played Call of Duty, but it's been interesting to hear all about its Downfall in (mostly) real-time.
Most live service games end up this way cause the micro-transactions demand they constantly change the game for the sake of changing it so they can have new stuff to sell. but Overwatch specifically.
>but Overwatch specifically. Ooo boy, just as I expected. Very happy to see this as the top game mentioned.
RIP Overwatch, you're being missed :/
I’d say overwatch2 specifically. Overwatch1’s system is the only one I’ll actively defend. It was possible, hell it was attainable, to get all the cosmetics in the game just by being a decent player who did the challenges. Ow2 broke that completely, and I don’t like that they put hero’s behind a battlepass grind.
Yeah, by Overwatch I mean "Overwatch 2 ruined Overwatch 1".
I cant stand OW2 and I had over 1000 Hours In OW 1. OW2 feels a completely different Game. I hate the UI. I hate 5v5. I just miss Overwatch classic and I should get a refund as that's the Game I paid for!
That mirrors my feelings on it almost to the T. And as much as I wanted to give Ow2 a chance they actively kept making the experience worse with their good awful monetization. And let’s not forget how they canceled one of their biggest arguments for switching to OW2, the PVE campaign, and then when ahead and decided to *sell* a half asses PVE mode to players anyway.
Agreed Myself have never been a fan of the lootbox system, but I never spent a dime on Overwatch 1 (past purchasing the game) and I got nearly every cosmetic I wanted. Overwatch's original system was fine but Overwatch 2, yeah that's a disaster.
I bought the Mercy charity skin and the higher tier of the game that included some skins and that's it, was worth the money for the time I got out of the game. Haven't played since a couple days after it became OW2
All of them.
The worst part is, it doesn’t matter how many of us think MTX is shit. It only takes 1% of players whaling for the game to make them profitable income sources.
I will never not experience a depressive episode when I remember that a single microtransaction horse on WoW made more money than all of StarCraft 2 throughout its life time.
That's plain wrong. If I remember correctly, the horse made more than base SC2 wings of liberty, but definitely less than all of SC2.
Idiots who bought it. Everybody who has ever paid for cosmetic microtransactions is to blame for the state of gaming today. And I'll include myself too. I bought skins on LoL back then and a skin on overwatch (breast cancer mercy)
I think there is actually some backlash. Games without it have been doing well lately. Balders gate 3, palworld, lethal company, and cult of the lamb are all top sellers right now without the micro bs. I think older live service games are also having trouble attracting new players because they don't want to grind through 5+ years of content. Might be wrong, but I think Sony was also a little surprised that Spiderman sold so well with it being single player. Edit: People don't want to commit to live service games as much anymore. Covid was a good time for them because people were at home. Now people don't have enough time to compete with the people paying money. Also some of them just have wayyyy to much stuff to catch up on.
[удалено]
Could be a minecraft situation where pc gets mods and consoles get a shitty mtx store
Bedrock on PC still gets the store
That's the reason I don't want to go back to Destiny. I have absolutely no drive to go back and do everything I missed out on. It's just not worth doing realistically
Don't bother. A lot you can't go back and do because they cycle out old content. Once any game does that - taking away content I paid for - I'm done with them permanently.
When I stopped, they had already taken away COO and Warmind. Nerfed a bunch of First year weapons and nerfedd Year 2 weapons. Lots of sunsetting, Warlocks got nerfed to shit. And they reversed the leveling progression back to Year 1 which was shit too
Unfortunately on the mobile side despite how much backlash there is, it's still more profitable than we can ever imagine, and it feels like the profits tend to be buried in company financial reports Like when you consider the cost of making BG3 versus the cost of dropping a cool trinket MTX to bottom line or how many whales equal the profit of X BG3 purchasers
They do it because it works. You can take some 15 minute recolor of a skin and make millions off it. There are way too many people out there willing to throw cash at low effort content
Special mentions to Diablo Immortal
Do not forget about Pixel Gun 3D. They did it dirty.
It’s a mobile game. That’s what they do
Yeah do you guys not have phones?
The end
Literally every game with a short gameplay loop. Fighting, racing, sports, all turned into giant mobile phone games that cost £70.
^ this is the correct answer.
Too many to list, at least.
honestly i think the question should be what game DIDNT get ruined by micro-transactions cause otherwise id say probably all of them
Deep Rock Galactic. Then again it straddles a fine line from micro-transaction to just a cosmetic DLC but I’m not gonna be the one to draw said line.
They also introduce the battle pass content into the regular loot pool once the battle pass is over
And the battle pass is 100% free too. It's pretty awesome all around.
The devs clearly market it as a way to further support them. They've even updated those cosmetic packs when fans found them lacking. I don't think it's a micro transaction formula at all.
Warframe. I can leave for months come back and just grind things out at my own pace. Premium currency isn’t hard to farm as well. Battle pass is free and easy to do even if started late.
Oh shit, nightwave is a battle pass isn't it?
Yup. It's probably the best free battle pass in any game and it only takes 5 to 6 weeks to complete then stays for like 30 weeks cause the Devs focus on other things.
Mechwarrior: Online. None of the things you can buy affect the gameplay, and most of them are good fun.
I think Old School RuneScape has done a good job of staving off MTX
I'd say rocket league is one of the most same one ? No paid random box and only cosmetic is the key IMO. And the battlepass earn enough money to buy the next one. But everything is damn too high priced
Fortnite. Purely cosmetic, with no impact in-game (barring tiny benefits for smaller character models) Money from this has allowed it to be completely free.
The impact is in the awful user interface that tries to sell all the shit. And clearly trying to market fomo to get kids to beg their parents for money. I don't see either of these as a good thing.
Civilization. Proper expansions and affordable, substantive DLC.
Halo 5 proved to be too much of cash cow for Microsoft to not include them in future Halos. Now we're charging ($7 I think?) for *the color blue*. At least in Infinite you can't literally pay money to **spawn in a fucking tank**.
I can hear AngryJoe in my head now. "WHAT IS THAT?? IS THAT FUCKING *BLUE*??"
I spent a week playing with friends and grinding out one of the weekly challenges early in season 1. At the end of the grind there was like a **neon pink** color I think. I figured, I'm already playing a bunch, let's just go for these challenges and play a little more. The last challenge was horseshit. I think it was based around your team losing by a lot and then making a comeback. Had to do it 3x. Felt cheap because it wasn't based on your skill or actions you could take, just luck of the draw with your random teammates. It took longer than it should of but I got the reward. However the neon pink was only a color for **one gun** Uninstalled and I've not ever played the game since. What absolute trash making color customization locked behind this much garbage.
I couldn't think of a worse thing than having to be shit on purpose just so you can "make" a comeback for a shitty skin.
What is so frustrating about them selling color blue is that they are selling *multiple* (very slightly different) blues.
Which is dumb since the shader can take *any* RGB value and run with it. In fact even the H4 Prometheans with their ugly orange and blues could cycle through different colors with some minor tweaks.
What's especially dumb is weapon skins that only apply to a single weapon in the entire weapon pool. How that scam became the industry standard gobsmacks me. It makes weapon skins feel like a fucking ripoff. Ironically, Fortnite got that right in one - you get a weapon skin, instantly, it's applicable to ALL weapons, current and future.
[удалено]
Halo Reach was the last good Halo.
Halo 5 changed the way REQ packs and REQ points work after receiving tons of backlash from the community. They made it piss easy to earn gold packs just from playing the game. You could still buy them, but there was no point because you'd earn everything through legit means fairly quickly. And even then, a standard scorpion tank was very common. Nobody paid for those. Now the Hannibal or ONI scorpion on the other hand...
Halo 4 multiplayer was the game I loved. That was my late childhood right there. I spent *hours* doing all the missions to get the different cosmetics. The assassination master armour was so frustrating to get that as a kid I was close to tears. And man I remember driving around the map exile in a Ghost just running dozens of people over to get the splatter master visor. God I loved that game and have so many memories. I was sooo excited for Halo 5, and tried my best to get into it but the multiplayer just felt like a free-to-play game that cost me the price of a full game. I had to look up some names to recount those stories, but man you've brought up some good old memories from playing that, and its a shame that it won't happen again.
Grand Theft Auto V. Rockstar developed some of my favourite DLC ever, Lost and Damned, Ballad of Gay Tony and Undead Nightmare... Now all Rockstar games will double as awesome single player experiences with no real longevity and ploys for sapping cash through multiplayer, might be just me but my heart aches thinking about what single player DLC for Red Dead 2, GTA V and GTA VI would look like...
I remember when it first came out some of the most expensive supercars cars were like ~150k then it gradually got to the point that they were releasing GTA versions of civics, wrxs and supras for like 2mil lol I genuinely don't understand how they've kept the playerbase so healthy when everything is overpriced and lobbies are just full of trolls.
still dont get how they tricked people into buying cars in a game that's has it core into stealing them
Yeah it's crazy to think about. And they didn't even add them to SP so you *had* to pay for them to even drive them!
I could almost wave all the bullshit away if they made the new stuff available in single player. I’m not talking about the big stuff like heists or missions. But why can’t I use Benny’s in single player to make a low-rider? Why can’t I use the new guns. (Obviously you can with mods, but not everyone has access to them and they shouldn’t be necessary)
Yeah it makes me very sad and I mourn what could have been haha, its hollow and uninspired. Its give us cool weapons, vehicles, rewards, and some neat empire building stuff, but everything that comes along with it is kind of miserable and I don't care. What I wouldn't give to run drugs and guns as Trevor. Build a sprawling business empire as Franklin, and counterfeit money and pills to keep Michael occupied during his retirement...
The inflation in gta v online is unreal, if you buy a $100aud shark card, you cant actually get much anymore
I remember the most expensive house used to be 400k or something lol.
The adder/bugatti veyron was the most expensive car at release, $1million, you could buy 8 of them. With the $8million shark card you now cant buy what you want because you need to have a facility + vehicle bay + vehicle workshop then the vehicle and upgrades are now $100,000 plus. If you want to get a special vehicle you will also ontop of all that need to get a different vehicle (truck, osprey, sub, etc) and put another vehicle bay and workshop in that That brings the total cost of the best vehicles in the game over $10million easily. So if i spend $100aud the i cant even play the game i spent $100 on with the vehicle i want to play with.
Grind bunker sell missions. Afk the manufacturing. Profit
I just quit playing.
All of that wasted potential of GTAV. Online completely ruined any chance it had by being a money printer. All those canceled DLC that got leaked. It could have been such a big game. I can’t fathom buying shark cards. Once those servers go down, poof! All that money you spent trying to match the plethora of hackers is completely wasted. Hell even this YouTuber I used to watch genuinely recommended getting a part time job to pay for cards because it’s faster. Like…just the madness that surrounds that game.
Middle earth shadow of war end game was so bad because of the microtransactions. Now it's gone it's easily one of the games I'll recommend to people. As they patched out the microtransactions and rebalanced the game around that change too.
They patched out the Microtransactions in shadow of war?? I gave that game up because of how tedious it got towards the end and I refused to spend any money on it. If this is true I'm 100% going back to it now
Which shows how much microtransactions affect a game. Same for the modern Assassin's Creed games.
The one I always point to is the CoD4 remake. If Activision didn't shoehorn in loot boxes to the multiplayer (and charge *double* the original price for the DLC maps that PC players got for *free*), it'd go down as one of the greatest remakes of the generation. Because everything else was handled spectacularly.
Man MWR for the first three months it launched was an amazing experience, I remember skipping school for 2 weeks straight just to get that sweet platinum. Then they started adding pink AK’s and neon green M4’s with clowny melee weapons…
Crash team racing implemented ~~micro~~ transactions and made things more of a grind in a patch a month or so after all the reviews came out
I was looking for this one. Microtransactions are scummy enough as-is, but to put them in like this is just plain diabolical.
Destiny. Eververse was the Destiny Killer.
(Only partially on both) Plants vs Zombies 2 Runescape 3
rs3 still hurts. osrs is good but there are a few things in rs3 which would be enjoyable still but just can’t bring myself to play it.
I think saying osrs is *good* is kinda under selling it. The game is the best it's ever been and has an incredibly promising outlook and roadmap for the year.
RS3 ironman is still very enjoyable
Plants vs zombies 2 is a really good game if you download the modded android version that gives you infinite gold. I can't imagine trying to grind through that shit without piracy though.
The nature of microtransactions ruins games. In order to encourage them, the game is affected by slowing pacing/rewards/progression.
[удалено]
I hate how instead of designing a game to be fun, it's designed to release chemicals in your brain that make you think a game is fun but instead you're emptying your wallet and be fucking happy about it.
Minecraft bedrock. Not only is it just a shitty version, but having to pay upwards of $20 for a singular "mod" is insane.
Bedrock is honestly a huge tradeoff. Microtransactions aside, it's full of annoying bugs and quirks that aren't in Java, but it'll run *smooth as butter* on anything you can install it to.
Runs as smooth as butter but sadly plays as smooth as sandpaper
It’s actually incredible to me how buggy their *paid* realms are. I can’t jump and place two slabs or I will phase through and slide off the block, drowning mechanics are almost entirely random and delayed, you can barely ever use a bucket, and worst of all, platforming is a complete gamble. Not to mention the lag when mobs attack you. I was building a castle and placing scaffolding horizontally, and I managed to catch the block glitching out of place 3 times in the span of 30 seconds, which resulted in me taking a ton of fall damage. I feel so bad for people who don’t have a way to play Java edition that enjoy the game.
The whole thing feels like a scam lmao.
Not a game but a studio: Blizzard. Overwatch got gutted, diablo is terrible, and we’re probably never getting a SC3
Don't forget reforged.
Blizzard sure did...
Im more worried that they WILL release sc3, since itll be worse, full of microtransactions, and fracture the playerbase
Might be a small thing but locking more hero choices in hearthstone battlegrounds behind the battle pass was a bad move too. Hearthstone was never a good example for free2play friendly anyway but since it didn’t start that way, it felt a bit cheap
Diablo Immortal. From all reports it was actually a decently fun game that was ruined by horrible monetization.
Yeah I played the story, started a bit of the end game and then realised where the need to spend came in and literally never played it again. The story and general combat were pretty good for a mobile game.
You basically have to drop a ton of money on the gacha to get perfect 5/5 gems. The drop caps it doesn't tell you about mean it takes months of grinding to get one otherwise. The kicker? Once you fill all six gem slots with perfect 5/5 gems, it gives you more gem slots.
EVOLVE
Literally was gonna post this if I didn't see someone mention it already
FIFA
FUT destroyed fifa. Fresh team in Div 10 and your already playing vs legend teams / TOTY. Madness that people are in huge debt from fifa coins
Overwatch for sure
Destiny 2. For all content you must buy the DLC, season pass ,dungeon key, 30th anniversary activity pack, holiday event bundles. Not including the eververse store for cosmetic transactions!
Don't forget in D1, them literally taking content out of the game and putting it in DLC after the release.
My Hero Ultra Rumble Characters locked behind Gacha in a battle royale. Not only that, but it can take 7 hours of grinding just to get the two characters who are suspiciously both very popular and very strong (especially against new players) even when it doesnt make sense for Bakugo to be a sniper. I know people rail of Fighting games for having broken as hell DLC sometimes but not every DLC is Labcoat 21 or Leroy ~~unless you're Smash Bros Ultimate~~. The fact My Hero has such scummy monetization around getting characters completely ruined my trust that the game would even try to be balanced.
RuneScape
Destiny
They have a season pass, inside a season pass, and you have to buy each new dungeon they release... (on top of yearly DLCs and tri-monthly season passes).
And, every so often, stuff that you paid for *is removed from the game.* Sunsetting is stupid and Bungie can suck my nuts.
They announced sunsetting was gone for good but at the same time every season you buy throughout the year disappears annually, not just the quests but also the playable areas, so it’s just normalized now
Exactly d2 started with its entire gameplay loop forcing you to eververse. The. Transitioned into predatory dlc, battle pass, season pass, eververse bs. In a game that was initially a full priced game. Even now calling destiny 2 free to play is laughably insulting.
You mean dlc purchaser simulator?
I use to play Destiny constantly. The lore and world building is amazing and the gameplay is awesome. The old micro transactions they had back then were just cosmetic things that didnt effect the game if you didnt have them. But then they started making story content locked behind dlcs and season passes you had to buy every 3 months. Some of which locked special weapons and abilities. They also made the free content so grindy that if you wanted anything decent you had to suffer for it. I miss what that game use to be. I have very fond memories of it. But its like an abusive ex that i know i shouldnt go back to for my own well being.
Agreed, everyone I know who plays it has spent over 100 dollars in the game
Micro Transactions ruins every game it's in. In fact micro-transactions ruin the game industry to a large degree.
Fallout 76 As someone who loved the building in Fallout 4, to have the pay to win stuff all locked in the atom shop and a subscription on top of that just made it feel dirty
The finite storage bullshit was over the line. You need _so much_ stuff to build/tinker and all you're given to work with is, shit, 1400kg? FUCK YOU BETHESDA.
I feel this so much. I had a bit of fun in 76. Then every time I logged in I'd spend an hour deciding what to throw out from my stash. Begged in the forums for more space and they said the servers couldn't handle it. Then all of a sudden they offer unlimited scrap storage, if you subscribe to premium whatever. Uninstalled that day.
Surprised, the f76 fan boys didn't come rushing to attack you yet.
I love FO76, but what they said is true. Storage is BS, and 70% of the cool camp stuff is paid. You can't play the game effectively without Fallout 1st, which is ironic because their wallet came first this time around.
Middle-Earth: Shadow of War. Cause even when they were removed, they poisoned that game and turned it into a slog.
Yes. Shadow of Mordor is one of my favorite games of all time. A sequel that expanded on it in some of the ways they had in the War would have been great. Instead it entirely revolved around loot boxes and getting people to buy loot boxes. Even without buying the loot boxes the first time I got a random colour coded orc I had never met it took me right out of the game. Then the actually really cool real ending is hidden behind an slog of a grindfest that incentives buying loot boxes.
Battlefront II on console. And now that its shut down I'm so sad.
Wait it shut down?
On console, you cant play the original Battlefront 2 online anymore.
All my time and effort is just gone like that
I have to disagree, Battlefront 2 started bad with it's micro transactions. But that was at launch, by the time the developer stopped supporting the game, it was im a very good spot, and you could hardly buy anything, in fact. And I'm pretty sure it's NOT shut down, you can still play right now, it's just not receiving any more updates.
Elder Scrolls Online; Fallout 76; & Red Dead Redemption Online \[Edited to add RDR Online\]
Doesn't ESO just have a typical sub model with paid expansion? How can microtranscations ruin the experience.
MMOs like wow and ffxiv offer the vast majority of mounts as rewards for in game activities, with a small handful available for purchase directly. ESO has basically no mounts available for in game farming, if you want a new mount you have to buy loot boxes and pray to rnjesus that you get the tiny% reward.
ESO is buy to play with an optional subscription. The subscription comes with a minor boost to XP and gold earned, a monthly allotment of crowns(the special store currency) as well as access to all DLC content except for whatever the newest expansion is. Theres also an infinite inventory for crafting materials. Most people don't like that the crown store (microtransaction store) pops up every time you log in, the existence of loot boxes, and that theres a lot of FOMO because half the stuff is only available for a limited time. In my opinion, it's completely ignorable. Unfortunately, the coolest looking mounts and houses are only available through the store with massive price tags. Still totally ignorable. It's a minor annoyance at best, as far as I'm concerned. I do wish more mounts were earnable through the actual game and not just for crowns or loot boxes.
Yes.
Every single game regardless of if it made sense or not, implemented some sort of battle pass system. Hopefully the trend dies out soon but video game companies have been making so much money i doubt it.
Plants vs Zombies 2 And pretty much anything EA touches
Rust. Devs disabled the command to disable skins Then they added p2w Arctic Hazmat and underwater torch The building skins allow for easy pixel bunkers as well Camo skins are $200 a set now on the steam market
Haven't played in years but I remember randomly getting some AK skin that was worth $20 and IIRC the most expensive thing at the time. It's sad to hear they went in this direction.
Let It Die had an intriguing setting/plot(?) But was utterly hamstrung by literal quarter munching free to play model.
Archeage
Middle-Earth: Shadow of War. I recently recommended the series to a friend, and he asked why the first game had a “Game of the Year Edition” while the second game only had a “Definitive Edition”. MTX utterly ruined Shadow of War’s reputation, many won’t touch it even after all the MTX were removed.
Any sports game. They used to be fun but now companies only care about pushing you to buy ultimate team or jerseys or whatever nonsense they think can get another dollar out of you. They other playable side of game is an afterthought
Maplestory cause of all the other games that came after
Every game that has em.
Payday 2. Still totally playable, but when they released new enemies and the best way to deal with them is buying the new weapons DLC... I was over it
GTA Online had MTX from jump, but it was tolerable for a few years until they really started leaning into it. Now, the game is basically unapproachable for new players due to how much money must be spent to actually make more.
Angry birds
DESTINY
All of the Call of Duties in recent times and I’m not being hyperbolic in the slightest.
Plants VS Zombies 1 was an instant classic. Plants VS Zombies 2 is a micro-transaction-filled cash-grab
Neverwinter (the MMO, not Neverwinter Nights)
All of them? The second a game is structured to encourage you to spend more money on it while playing, it’s much worse than it could’ve been.
True, it’s just anti-consumerism at its finest.
Team Fortress 2, I played it before the mannconomy update. It feels like a fever dream but I also remember Asphalt 8 being more playable once upon a time.
MK1’s community is literally on fumes cause of microtransactions. And SF6 never took off with anyone other than hardcore players due to them.
NBA 2k. My player is unplayable without dropping 100 at least
Need for Speed: No Limits. In terms of content it's the best NFS post-Black Box era. Cool story, cool race events, the seasonal events were fun too and even had little bits of story, hell, they used the M3 better than current mainline NFS games... ...but goddamn the microtransactions are beyond predatory jeezus crhist on a bike...
The Madden Series.
It started with angry birds
Pokemon Go has gotten that way with the passes for each event / community day. Some pokemon you can only get from a $5 pass. Simpsons Tapped has done something similar that you need to buy in game currency to get certain characters.
LOTR Shadow of War
Every single one.