So Photek, if you're arguing with me based on conjecture have you played through the game twice, once on default and once with the XP boost?
And you also accuse my point of "conjecture" and then follow it up with, "and who's to say...". There are opinion pieces out there by people who have tried the game under both conditions and say that progress feels.smootger with the boost on, as I described. They mention having played Origins too and that Odyssey throws up more times when you are gated off from the "flow" of the game because of your level. This of course happened in Origins too but they said it was more obvious and jarring here.
Unless you've also played the game with the boost on, then you're rebuttal my point as "conjecture based on a couple of opinions" is based on... conjecture of the game based on your.. own opinion?
The point is, neither of us are developers on this game or involved in the publishing arm. It's unlikely someone is going to come out and say how the decision to stick a paid XP boost came about.
Photek wrote:Parksey wrote:Secondly, since when has "something doesn't affect me, therefore it's fine" been a great excuse for anything?
Who is it effecting negatively then? You can't pose such questions as rhetorical when they clearly are not.
I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here. I'm pretty sure that this can function as a rhetorical question (the rhetorical answer being that I don't think that is a great excuse). But still, it was more about the general feeling amongst some games that a certain microtransaction are fine as it isn't going to affect them.
And as I argued in my post, we actually have no way of telling if this microtransaction is affecting us when we play the game. We don't know whether the XP has been deliberately borked, if it's the same, how much we would have to grind etc. had their been no boost. We can't say definitively whether it's been engineered for cash.
And finally, Sterling's video was labelled "Impressions" and that's what he gave. Did you watch the video? He focused on a certain aspects but he gave his impressions. It wasn't supposed to be a review.
I can give or take Sterling's stuff, as he can be grating at times too. But I find it weird that you'd get annoyed by him on this. I'm not sure what you wanted from the video and from him. Sterling does what a lot of YouTube personalities do. I've gotten back in to Destiny 2 recently, and a lot of "impressions" videos for that game, were people latching on to one aspect and going with it. It's still an "impression".
You seemed to be quite irked by this, possibly thinking I'm berating the quality of the game, which I'm not.
I'm berating the practice behind XP boosts like this. If we could wholly determine that they haven't manipulate gameplay to suit their microtransaction - not something either of us can definitely prove - it would still be a pretty shoddy business decision to try and make money off the back of your £50 by decreasing the time it takes to level up in return for cash. The fact the game is good, you like the game or aren't affected personally, is irrelevant of the decision Unisoft made, and continues to make in most of its games.
And even if the XP boost WAS something just for part-time gamers, with only a few hours to play each week and who wanted to move through the game a little quicker, maybe just see the story stuff, why should this still cost them extra, in a full price title? That's a defense that comes up a lot and which I don't think really sticks.