In my defense.... (Destiny)

by Speedracer513 , Dallas, Texas, Monday, October 23, 2017, 12:16 (2595 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

Nobody is claiming that Eververse is ruining their life, lol. It’s just designed in a way to earn more money than the items for sale would earn in a truly fair marketplace.

I agree with a lot of your feelings but I'm not sure this is true.

You are thinking of real money being valued at a rate of 1 item from the vault of goodness. Understandable, but what if you were to instead think of it as about 100 bright dust. Each item is worth a minimum of 95 bight dust (I believe) and many are worth considerably more. So, when you pay or play, you get about 100 for each transaction. It just happens to be that you *might* get something much more valuable. You may get the exact thing you want or you may get something worth more than 100 bright dust. But, you're never left with nothing (unlike a casino). Now you know the value of real money/ real time. Sometimes you get lucky, but there is always a path forward if you didn't. The obscured value of those engrams (100 bright dust) is probably the most problematic part, but I don't think it is unfair. I'm pretty sure most people have figured out whether the math is worth it on a gut level even if they haven't quantified it. Under this framing, the products are being fairly priced, but they're just higher than what I think you framed them as.

I didn’t mean to suggest that items were being unfairly priced by way of conversion. I meant that the RNG nature of buying engrams forces you to spend more money overall than you would spend were you able to simply buy the exact item you want outright (case in point, Speedracer spent $40 to get the Six Shooter emote). You might get the item you want out of your very first engram, but you probably won’t. And you might get bright dust out of an engram, but who knows how much. So just like a casino, there will be the occasional winner that gets what they want right away. But all together, I guarantee Bungie pulls in more money this way than they would it they removed the RNG layer.

Just in the interest of full disclosure and context:

I did indeed spend $40 on Silver this week, mostly because I wanted the Six Shooter (and Confused) emotes... but that was the total amount spent to get it on both PS4 and XB1.

I actually only spent $10 on PSN, and upon opening the final Bright Engram that came from that purchase - I not only got enough bright dust to finally buy it outright for the ~3500 bright dust asking price - but I actually got the Six Shooter emote in that engram (so I didn't actually need to buy it direct from Tess and instead used my bright dust to buy "Confused" for 800 dust, and now have a bit of a supply for the next time she is selling something I want).

On Xbox, however, I was almost completely out of bright dust - so I first dropped $10 or $20, and after dismantling all those engrams I was still just short of the amount needed because I didn't get hardly any straight-up "gifts of bright dust" in those engrams -- just shaders/sparrows/ghosts/emotes I didn't really care about and even after dismantling those, I was still a bit short. (Note that while you can indeed dismantle most purple-tier shaders for bright dust, they only give you about 10 each, and ghosts/sparrows are only a bit more (at 25 each iirc). So, I went ahead and spent a bit more, and now have the two coolest emotes on both platforms.

Clearly, I would love it if we could just buy anything we want from Eververse for a clear, up-front price without RNG being in the equation. I do appreciate, however, that her rotating stock means eventually she will likely be selling something I want so at least it's not completely up to RNG. Indeed, this is why I waited until this week to try to acquire Six Shooter. The amount of RNG involved and money needed to guarantee it was mitigated this week.

At the same time - I vehemently oppose any insinuation that spending the money I did this week makes me any "less savvy" or "suckered" into anything. I have made a very conscious decision to weigh the value of my $40 with the amount of extra gametime that would be required to earn the requisite XP and therefore Bright Engrams that would decrypt into either the items I want or the bright dust needed to direct buy those items.

And as much as Cody will want to point out that I am "paying to not play" -- sure, in a way he is correct -- BUT that still does NOT mean there is necessarily anything wrong with that! These are cosmetic items that have no direct impact on my gameplay, nor on Cody's. The fact that I choose to drop a bit of real money on those items rather than "farm public events" for those bright engrams DOES NOT make me a sucker or any less savvy than someone that is spending more time in the game earning that XP.

Edit: I'm pretty sure Cruel realizes this, but for the benefit of any others: those last two paragraphs are not directed at Cruel at all -- more at the inferences elsewhere in this thread by Kahzgul, Cody (and others?) about people that participate in the microtransaction economy. Also for the record, I think I agree with pretty much everything Cruel has said - especially about how the RNG is involved (even if it could be much worse) and made to get players to spend more than they otherwise would.