h1z1

[Big_Japan]

Item shops that affect gameplay are a dealbreaker. Always. 100% of the time.

Saying the buys are "optional" is missing the fact that the game's design philosophy has been subverted completely, from "something you purchase to have fun" into "something designed to manipulate you into shelling out money". You are literally playing a Skinner box designed to condition you into clicking the "pay" button.

Take a decent RMT system like CSGO skins. They're just cosmetic and even facilitate betting real money on matches using skins as pachinko chips, so I'd argue they actually add something to the game and competitive scene even if they're sometimes toxic distractions.

What you see instead with SOE is the expansion into a new market, the PC parasite game, related to the artform of gaming only peripherally and predicated on the fact that a lot of money gets thrown into gaming by people who are not at all tasteful or informed consumers. A business model pioneered by the likes of Zynga. A business model that depends on carefully, scientifically nickel-and-diming you using operant conditioning.

If you fall for it, you are a sucker and you are contributing to the subversion of popular gaming into another ad-infested mass-media shitfest. There is no other perspective to take on the matter but the oblivious one.