But 'most' people dont mind IAP's if its unlocking part of the game etc, its like the old shareware type of thing, try the game out and if you like it buy the full version. I love that sort of model as i can try it out, not mess about installing a free lite version then if i like it, delete that, then install the full version when i buy it. Prefer to download a free 'shareware' version which if i like i can unlock it with a payment. But the huge huge issue with IAP's are the paywalls you often get, you get to say level 20 and its so difficult youre practically 'forced' to buy IAP's such as coins/more weapons etc. Other games its even worse, Dungeon Hunter 4 sounds terrible with the way you have to buy certain objects and items which you would think you would get for granted. I'm all for helping out devs when IAP's arent greedy or 'forced' on you. The classic IAP game to me is Bullet Time, i know a fair few people who were quite happy buying IAP's as they werent 'in your face' or forcing you to upgrade to weapons etc. For devs it must be tricky to be honest, they go freemium as they didnt make enough money even when their app was 69p as too many cheapskates waited for it to go free. On the other hand if its freemium a lot of people like playing freemium games and grinding so they dont have to buy anything. So in a 'way' devs have to have a few 'paywalls' or they wont make any money whatsoever. Difficult one. Again i still think if we all simply bought games when they are released at 99c or 1.99 there would be so much less freemium. Sadly that doesnt happen though
We already have a pretty stellar example of opposition to the idea that IAP unavoidably ruins games (both in terms of consumer perception and actual gameplay balance/mechanics) in Warhammer Quest. Not only has the game sold very well at the (laughably-termed) "premium" price of US$4.99, it has been ranked and reviewed very highly, and a quick check of ten different app stores around the world reveals that every single piece of IAP characters, expansion and gold has been bought many times over in every one of them. The irony there is that not only is the gold IAP entirely optional, there's really not even enough stuff in the game to spend it on to warrant buying it in the first place, and certainly no paywalls or deliberately overpriced IAP-only equipment designed to encourage it. Now, if the developers had decided not to include the optional IAP, the only outcome we know as an absolute certainty is that the hundreds of dollars they have made so far through that optional IAP would not have been made, and that as a result the developers would currently have considerably less incentive to keep developing, and certainly fewer resources with which to do so.
IAP is important to developers to make money . I am not opposed to freemium games however I wouldn't spend a penny on those 1000+ city builders which are just made with no skill or quality. If the game is good like RR3 is in my opinion I have no problem dropping a few pounds every so often. I have played for over 7 hrs according to the in game stats . I paid £60 for the new call of duty and the season pass and the new camo and I've only played 5.5 hours. I still went to preorder the next one. It seems like when things are brought to mobile they devalue significantly. Suddenly a game that would be at least £10 on steam is sold for 70p on iOS or even for free. The race to the bottom has brought us here. One opinion : I think some devs are very shady with IAP. They put it in children's games and hope they accidentally buy it for £69.99. If a game is for a young audience there should be a price tag and no IAPs.
Let's not, because that analogy doesn't work. We're not talking about getting access to something you "should have had" included in the purchase price, we're talking about something you know is extra, but you're choosing to steal anyway instead of pay for. Using your car analogy, we're not talking about the car's normal ability to go faster being locked out unless you pay more (which would be closer to the equivalent of a "full game unlock" IAP), we're talking about you stealing an optional audio system extra that was not part of the purchase price, and then turning around and stating that you're entitled to that audio system because it's your opinion that the car should have come with it in the first place. Your posts don't bear out that claim, and simply stating the equivalent of, "Yeah, well, I don't care what you say, IAP is wrong and everyone knows it," isn't an argument. Of course there is: the base game includes all non-IAP content. If you haven't paid for a given piece of extra IAP content being sold by the developer, then you're not entitled to it. At all. End of story. Circumvention of IAP by any means (including the inane "I didn't hack it, I just modded it!") is not justifiable, and is also not a topic up for debate here. Certainly, but the existence of that game doesn't at all contradict the point I just made, which is that IAP isn't the inevitable unholy Red Death some make it out to be. Warhammer Quest is pretty compelling evidence for the argument that there is nothing inherently wrong with IAP as a concept, so people who dislike IAP should probably focus more on providing specific examples of how and where it is being "abused", and less on decrying the fact that it exists at all.
I miss cheat screens. Just have a menu option called "cheats" which is greyed out and costs 69p to unlock, and put a bunch of fun toggles inside it. It's still not as cheap as cheats used to be (GameGenie was something of a specialist tool, most cheats were button codes and passwords), but... whatever, just do it. I liked that. Disable leaderboards when cheats are active though.
That's not how it works; you don't get to decide what should have been in somebody else's game. If Rodeo say the Skaven area in WHQ is an additional IAP, you don't get to tell them they're wrong, that it should have been part of the main game, and then steal that IAP because you have decided that you were entitled to it all along and that the developers are just being greedy. You have no "right" to "mod" anything here, so I have no idea why you keep going on about this as though you do. If you're circumventing IAP, you're stealing, and if you're openly admitting to circumventing IAP, this thread should probably be stopped here. I'd suggest not pushing this line of argument too strenuously. To quote Eli himself on the matter:
Agree 100% with the last sentiment. When I saw the IAPs the My Little Pony game I actually could not believe it.
....and yep, I'd go for this. Might help to clear my backlog of games. I used to like entering pokes and peeks and the like and I'd be more than happy to pay a sneaky 69p for a quick cheat as long as leaderboards were disabled. Bl** dy great idea.
You have claimed more than once that it is fine if somebody "mods" their game in order to circumvent IAP, and that you can't blame them for doing so. It's not fine, and insisting that it is fine is in fact encouraging piracy.
Sometimes I have this dream where two TA members are in a boxing ring, but they're fighting only using words, no contact... and I get to referee the match.
Just curious... what do you consider "cracking" IAPs to mean, if not circumventing the process in order to obtain the same perks and/or items by means of modding and without payment?
I think we are mostly agreed on the subject. I guess what I was trying to get at is this: I dislike seeing people discount "acceptable" IAP as "not really IAP" because then when IAP comes up in a discussion, people are less likely to talk (accurately) about the different IAP models that exist. I like that model, too. Like you said, it's nicer than downloading multiple apps. Also, I never buy IAP unless I'm actually playing the game, so the IAP model ensures I never spend money on games I don't play (*glances at massive DS collection*). The thing that gets to me, though, is when we are cool with this kind of IAP and/or others, but then say we hate all IAPs. What we really mean is we hate specific kinds of IAP that we feel are exploitative of the player, or detrimental to the game design. I know it's going to seem nitpicky, but I think that's a pretty important distinction to make. At the very least, I think it's more interesting for discussion purposes to be a little more clear on the subject. For example: I'm curious as to what kinds of IAP people tolerate in free apps that they don't in $1, and what they tolerate in $1 that they don't in $5 or $10 apps. Would a level pack in a $5 game be a deal-breaker? Ad removal in a $1 game? Currency in a $10 game? Is pernicious IAP more common in some genres than others? I always thought it was mostly kept in the domain of puzzle games and kRPGs. City builders, too, I guess. I just don't seem to run into freemium or freemium-style schemes very much.
For the record, whether or not a user has the legal right to mod their software depends upon the country they live in. Regardless, it seems pretty ridiculous to claim that IAPs violate user rights. I'm pretty darn sure that the copyright owner is allowed to do whatever the heck they want with their software before you buy it. IF you have the right to mod the software, you would have the right to mod the software AFTER the IAPs have been designed into it. (I am not a lawyer etc. etc.)
I've seen some people in the past where the second they see the word IAP they refuse to buy it or start moaning about the game without realising that the IAP is quite 'lite'. Mentioned it before but to me 'some' IAP's are like cheat modes, in the 80's you had to type in a POKE into the game to get say infinite lives, more ammo. As others have pointed out in the 90's you had the game genie and other devices. I remember checking Nintendo magazines in the early 90's as they often showed you cheat codes for various games, the old left/right/up/down etc or , damn i forget, in Doom you typed in a code to get all the weapons. To me 'some' IAP's are the modern day equivalent. I've got a busy life believe it or not, wife/kid etc, i dont always have time to play every game over and over till i complete, some games i like to cheat if possible, finish the game then delete the 1 dollar game off my system. Again i keep mentioning Bullet Time, the IAP's in that arent in your face, you arent 'forced' to buy them. Six Guns could have been a very good game but at times it seems like you have no choice but to simply buy IAP's to get tons of coins as you dont get enough from missions etc, the IAP system is very unbalanced. So i think its bad when people see the word IAP and think no no no, at times IAP can be 'okay' but i do admit sadly the majority seems to 'force' you to buy items if you want to continue to later levels. Problem is with 400+ apps on my device the last thing i want to do is to grind grind grind because the stupid game wont give me enough coins and the only other way would be to buy them. 'Lite' IAP's to me are fine, at the end of the day devs need money, but you get some greedy devs/companies with bad IAP's with paywalls etc, and others which arent bad at all But look at the classic Punch Quest, game was free, there were IAP's so you could buy a coin doubler or other items, in a way like a 'thanks' to the dev. From what i read the guy hardly had any IAP's and didnt make much at all. If i like a game i'll often get one IAP as a way of a 'thanks' or 'to me this game is like a 99c or 1.99 game so i'll spend that much'.
