As any parent knows, choosing a name for your offspring can be a tough decision.
Publisher ngmoco has certainly been making hard work of the process with its promising online first person shooter that was originally called LiveFire and then became KillTest.
It now appears to have settled on Eliminate, although there's probably time for a last minute change to something more of the moment like Obama...
More significant than the name though are details of how the game will work.
The basic concept is that you're testing weapon systems for a company called Arsenal MegaCorp. It tracks your performance, giving you in-game credits which can be used to upgrade your armoured suit and weapons systems, depending on how successful you are.
Every time you enter a batle arena, you'll use up some of your energy quota. This is replenished every day, which limits the number of games you can play and earn credits.
When you've used up your daily energy allocation, you can still play Eliminate but your stats won't be tracked and you won't earn credits.
However, using the micro-transactions features of OS 3.0, you can buy - with real money - additional energy.
In this way, ngmoco enables players who want to quickly build up their experience and credits to pay for the privilege.
The system is explained in the first official Eliminate video.
There's no news yet about how much extra energy you'll get for your 99c, €0.79 or 59p though.
We don't know when Eliminate will be released either, but we'd expect it to be sometime during September or October.
This will be a disaster. You pay real money to gain energy, you convert energy into credits, you convert credits into upgrades, and the game becomes completely imbalanced. Those who spend the most money dominate the servers. Those who don't spend money cannot compete with those who do. Just like with all those reskinned, menu-based MMOs. Dumb, just dumb.
Not sure that it's as obvious as converting energy into credits because the better player you are the higher the level of conversion, so it will cost rich bad players a lot of money to get to the upgrades of a good but poor player.
I guess that's the plan at least.
Azrael |6 September 2009
Ngmoco should scrap this idea of micro transaction, and we as consumers must let Ngmoco know that we are against cash based microtransaction....if this succeeds other devs will follow and that will make idevice gaming more expensive than it should be!!!!
Sir_mix_alot |6 September 2009
This will be an epic fail. I lost all respect for ngmoco for even conceiving this, now we can expect devs to hold back on content that should have been on the game in the first place for DLC. Stop this money making scheme ngmoco!!!
Xbox |6 September 2009
From what i hear they are going to charge for dlc with touch pets as well. Hate that!
sorry folks, the micro-transaction wave is about to break upon us. Just this week half a dozen developers have comfirmed they're going to support this in their next upgdate.
Wilson |7 September 2009
This is terrible news!!! Why would they add micro transaction when there's going to be millions of people buying the game itself?! I mean... There should be some sort of map expansion pack or pay 3 bucks each month for a brand new server with a bunch more upgrades like Runescape (Please don't tease me, i've quit this game 3 years ago), but I did love how Runescape added a member server (there should be one in Eliminate), or something...
Ngmoco said they wern't going to add anything that would be very unfair... Well it looks like the lied to us!!! I mean come on! How much trouble is it just to make a members server with a bunch of more stuff in it?
Jesus christ... Very bad news... I mean, it would have been a lot better if leveling up would increase your "battery"...
It's depressing news that developers are jumping on the Micro-transaction bandwagon. Hopefully this idea will come up against some serious resistance from gamers, as it seems like nothing more than a method for companies to squeeze more cash out of their customers.
Obviously a reaction to to the well publicised 'race to the bottom', a game that utilises micro-transactions can initially be sold for a lower price, thus luring in more buyers. Who will then have to pay again and again as they progress through this game. No Thanks...
Honestly can't see myself paying for extra content for a game I already own, especially given you can get some excellent full games for a few pence on the appstore- e.g. Alive-4-ever, Castle of Magic, Flight Control etc- so depending on the cost, I'll be avoiding Eliminate. Now if Ngmoco also gave people the option of buying the full game at a premium price from day 1 alongside the cheaper micro- transaction enabled version, things might be different...
