All Diablo 4 all the time over here, I’m completely in love with it

You’re probably right there. Unfortunately, at least in the US, our government is still largely controlled by people who were born before the cordless phone was invented, or damn near it. They’re still learning how to send an email with an attachment, so it’ll be a while before they’re made to care about microtransactions.

My engagement with them varies from game to game, honestly. For me, the decision to spend extra money on a game I’ve purchased boils down to whether I enjoy the game enough to make it feel worth the money to me. I’ll ask myself if I will feel like I’ve gotten $20’s worth of fun out of it - which might be a crappy question to have to ask myself given that we used to buy games once and be done paying, but that’s where we’re at with the industry.

As it sits with Diablo 4 specifically, though, a cosmetic-only cash shop is something I can peacefully coexist with. I’d rather there be no microtransactions, because I’m not an Activision shareholder, but if there’s going to be some, let them be for optional content only. Besides which, the non-paid gear looks cool as hell to begin with.

No Man’s Sky is another example, as well, and I think the answer to those examples lies in the greed of the studios. I don’t like the idea of microtransactions any more than anyone else who isn’t named Bobby Kotick, but given what we know about corporate greed, it’s a reasonable conclusion to draw that if they can’t make billions with a cash shop they’ll make it some other way, and that way would probably be higher sticker prices. Third and fourth yachts don’t pay for themselves, you know.

Two massive differences between TOTK and Diablo 4 though - TOTK is not intended as a live service game with (presumably) years of intense support and extended development post launch, and TOTK is a first party game developed by the most successful video game console company to ever exist - meaning it’s an investment into selling more of their consoles. But mainly the first one. Diablo 4 is going to have seasons of content and according to one developer, 2 DLCs and prolonged support. So it’ll probably end up costing an order of magnitude more than TOTK to produce/support.

For me the sweet spot would be itemizing those $25 cosmetic sets so you can buy pieces of them at a time for a couple of bucks, even if piecemeal it’s a couple bucks more in total. I’m not likely to buy a $25 set but I’ll buy those 6 items at $5 a piece every time.

I’d suggest the developers themselves are probably not the ones pushing for the inclusion of microtransactions of any kind. Also, cosmetic shops are likely here to stay unless there’s some other way to support long-term development on games like Warzone, Fortnite, and Diablo.

Personally, I am okay with there being cosmetic content that is entirely unattainable without a cash purchase, so long as there is still cosmetic content attainable without microtransactions and the purchased content doesn’t yield any other advantage.

I can accept that I can’t have everything without buying it, far more than I could accept the standard price of a video game going up to $100-$120.

My first ever was Dragon Quest I (originally called Dragon Warrior), which you can get and play on Android/iOS or emulate, depending on what kind of JRPG you’re looking for. Dragon Quest XI on newer consoles is also a terrific classic-style game in the genre.

I too stand at the wall nursing my drink and waiting for someone near me to have a loud conversation I can contribute to