Is F2P Tactics taking over regular multiplayer games?

I don't know why but lately I've been seeing an increase on games "Free to Play" stuff. Basically it's where a game YOU ALREADY PURCHASED has this special feature in its multiplayer to open boxes with points, cash, ect by grinding for them. BUT they add DLC content that lets you skip the wait and open a box Instantly for a chance to get rare cosmetics or items that add no benefit to actually gameplay.
Before anyone adds the "if you don't like it don't, buy it" I'm making a small complaint about developers trying to flash these items to try and milk more money out their players. There are some people who won't fall for this, but there are also a wide variety of those who are lazy and will fuel this cash grab feature..

Greetings!

AFAIK, F2P is not as evil as a lot of people think / portray. It depends how is it implemented within the game.

Good F2P is for example League of Legends, maybe it is perfect, but it is a good example.

Bad F2P is the kind of games that are called "Freemium", which actually are not F2P and they lock every feature or object under a currency, be it real or virtual, generally the later one to avoid legal problems.

Also, what you are describing in your OP seems more "Freemium" than F2P. In case you are interested in the topic, I highly recommend having a look at this GDC Talk from 2014, very insightful.

Ironically, some game studios found out that part of their player base just love their game so much, they just want to throw their money at them, independently if the game is designed to "milk the player or not".

I don't have a problem with the business model. It can be done well and some games do a great job at it. But I think the industry has become obsessed with everyone trying to make their microtransaction system work. It's getting to be too much.

Shitty games will stay shitty. But the thing is, when you have people who put profits before quality, you will see them gladly lower their standards if that means they can cut costs and still make a killing. That's the real problem I have with it.

I also don't like the marriage of microtransactions and gambling. It's disgustingly easy for people to blow hundreds of dollars on a silly game before they even know it. Sure, we can argue about who's responsible all day but these things are intentionally added because they know people do this. I think it's wrong.

Yes. Gambling is already known as an activity that can easily coax human psychology into detrimental behaviors because of how attractive a potential reward may seem and how good it feels to win something, despite the system being rigged against the player. Casinos play up this whole luck bullshit to make people think that if they just keep playing, maybe luck will be on their side, instead of having those people see the games, especially slot machines, as nothing more than a bunch of numbers and statistics, where the payout is rigged, and that just because you keep playing on one machine doesn't mean that you will eventually profit. At least casinos pay in real money. Meanwhile, video games pay in fake digital bullshit that doesn't mean anything. Developers, and especially those fucking publishers, know exactly what they're doing when they implement a gambling system that uses real money to pay up fake shit, and I think less of them for it.

It's like Jim Sterling says, a lot of things people tend to dislike, like DLC, the F2P model, and multiplayer only, are not inherently bad concepts, and can certainly be done well, in theory. It's when those corporate cocksuckers at EA, Square Enix, etc. get their money humping reptilian claws on them do those ideas get turned against the consumer and exploited to maximize revenue for the corporation. DLC turns into cutting the game up, horse armor, and season passes, where people pay money to companies for a promise to get content that maybe isn't a bunch of shit later. DLC done right? See Bloodborne The Old Hunters for more info. Multiplayer only can definitely be great if it's substantial, fleshed out, and actually worth the asking price, despite not having a singleplayer component, but EA turned it into Star Wars Battlefront, where the game is pretty, but mediocre, and is lacking in content despite being a fully priced game. Likely because that content is going to be sold later as DLC.

F2P has definitely been done well. Ever play Warframe or Path of Exile? I managed to get hours of free entertainment without it feeling overly tedious or grindy. To circle back to what the OP is talking about, now I'm seeing more and more of aspects of the F2P model encroaching into paid retail releases. I know EA jumped on that bandwagon, and it seems like every big release by Square Enix has mictrotransactions. Microtransactions in a $60 game? Go fuck yourself. Right now it seems mostly sequestered in the multiplayer component. I find that borderline acceptable because I don't care about multiplayer, but a strict principle of mine is to boycott any game with microtransactions in its singleplayer. I will never tolerate this. The psychology behind free to play is about testing your patience. It's about fighting against you with a grind while dangling a carrot right in front of you the whole time, saying, "Don't you want to avoid this? Don't you want to have this now, not later? Come on, stop grinding and pay."

Now apply that to singleplayer (also works for multiplayer, but like I said, it doesn't piss me off that much), where you have a game with an in-game currency of some sort, probably in the form of resources. Apologists for this horseshit would say, "Don't like it? Don't buy it." Not sure how they could mouth all that off with such a giant corporate cock in their face cunt, but that assumes that the game's integrity wasn't compromised by the microtransaction system. It assumes that the game wasn't tweaked to play up that F2P psychology, "encouraging" players to spend money to expedite the tedious gameplay. Why should anyone trust any of these corporate cunts to not fuck the game up all just to get more money out of it? Look at Dead Space. That series was fucked because EA wanted to overhaul the normal system into something more resource based with Dead Space 3, and turned the progression system into a resource grind, where you could even send out a stupid robot to gather resources in an area. They then expected people, in this singleplayer game (I know it had co-op, that's irrelevant to me), to pay for resources. Back in the day, instant resource gathering was the domain of cheat codes.

>Microtransactions in a paid game
Not even fucking once.

I heavily disagree. Paying for all characters is absurd. DOTA2 is much better because you get all the Characters and only pay for voice packs, skins and other misc. items that aren't necessary to play the game.

Well, you can buy them with in game currency. You don't have to pay for the champs with real money. Unless you're rich and don't care or are very impatient.

That's fine! The point was not that League is "the best example" of good F2P, it is a good example.

As Zeriam said, you have access to everything through in-game currency (aka not real money) and you are not forced to pay any real money. If you pay real money for Runes, Rune Pages and Champions, well your problem honestly.

On the other hand, you are "forced to play" the game (you were going to do that anyway, were not you?) to get things from it, but that is normal. You play the game, you get something, you use that something to improve your account. Simple loop of action, consequence, reward.

I totally agree with you that having everything unlocked from the beginning as Dota2 is always better for the user, so the potential decision for buying stuff like Runes and such with real money is eliminated, but at the end of the day, it is the same situation for both LoL and Dota2. Both games only ask for your money when you want Cosmetic Items.