After playing World of Warcraft for 15 years, I started becoming increasingly bored and disgruntled with the game. The game being grindy and repetitive is no real surprise, I mean it’s an MMO. But the one thing that was really frustrating was paying monthly for a subscription and a huge chunk of cash for an expansion, but still having extra stuff flashed in my face all the time that was simply not possible to earn in-game. Mount skins, cosmetics, miscellaneous stuff that is only available in the Blizzard store. They also began adding loyalty items that require being subscribed every single month, and doing repetitive, extremely boring stuff on top of the other repetitive boring stuff, so basically double dipping on your grind, which really isn’t fun.
Aside from that, I also played other games that required a heavy amount of grinding too, and each one of them had similarly frustrating elements. Destiny 2, overwatch, Battlefield, Fortnite, Halo, and the list goes on. Each of them has the same issue: fear of missing out. FOMO basically makes it so that if you don’t seize the opportunity to spend real life money, you will never be able to obtain something really cool, because it’s only there for a short time, and then it’s gone, and you are made to feel guilty and bad about it. It’s just kind of depressing playing kind of games and realizing that you are now mentally dependent on financial transactions in order to get the full enjoyment of the game. That to me is a very very awful way to live life, and it really messes with your emotions
So I ditched every game that had any element of an in-game purchase. This is honestly helped my mental health a huge, huge amount. Now, I only play games that either have no microtransactions in them at all, or are completely free and 100% possible to play with no purchase required at all. So games like team fortress, deadlocked, Stardew Valley, and many other indie games that you can purchase and then never have to worry about getting suckered into the microtransaction cycle for
Ads are not required to play the game. If you want to watch them, the incentive is coin. There is no battle pass or anything. It’s genuinely a fun game.
I mean, it could be very fun and perhaps even worth playing, but surely you understand that a game that on-paper doesn’t require the viewing of ads, but heavily incentivizes just that is still problematic?
It’s like one of those “free-to-play” particularly grindy MMOs, sure, you don’t have to pay, just grind the “kill 10 goblin rats in a basement quest” for 250 hours and you’ll have all the loot you need to get to level 2, but the option to pay is there if you so-choose it.
In such a case it is fairly obvious that there is not actually a choice when you are heavily incentivized towards one end.
Not really because it’s not one of those “you need to watch ads to get coins to advance” kind of games. It’s ability to enjoy without ads is still amazing. I also believe that ads in games are OK with minimal disruption, a perfect example is this game. Non intrusive, no banners, no season pass, no ads after or before a round, etc.