It’s nice when there’s a game that gives you a lot to unlock, if you really get into it you’ll be occupied for a long time and really get your money’s worth.
But sometimes, things get a little squirrely, like when you can just drop a huge wod of cash instead. Granted, people can decide what to do with their own money, and if that means spending over $700 to unlock everything in For Honor instead of actually playing the game, that’s their prerogative. However, if you opt to play the game instead of pulling out your wallet, you’re not looking at a month or two of grinding, you’re looking at over two years.
So, if you’ve got For Honor and you’re already looking for ways to play it less, here’s the choice: $732 or spend 2.5 years. That’s under a dollar a day to not have to play the game in order to unlock everything. Of course, you can still enjoy the game without having to unlock everything, so you save that $732 and also don’t have to spend 2.5 years at it. The controversial issue is basically that the game’s unlocks aren’t really available during the game’s “lifetime”, even if you go hard at it, it’ll still take you about a year.
A user on reddit named bystander007 ran the numbers, here’s a breakdown:
“The average hero requires around 91500 steel to unlock all base games (no DLC/Update content) unlocks. This includes Emotes, Executions, Effects, Outfits, and Ornaments. From there, you multiply by 12 (for each hero) and get 1,098,000. That is approximately 7.32 of the $100 steel packs.”
Here’s why it’ll take so long to do:
“Assuming 1-2 daily hours of playtime for 5-7 days per week, it would take players 915 days or two and a half years – but by then, Ubisoft could have released a sequel already. “More dedicated For Honor players can do it more quickly, but there’s a limit to grinding Steel since the system was designed to reward first and foremost about two hours every day. They could earn up to 23550 Steel in a week, but even so to unlock everything they’d have to play 326 days – almost a full year.”
Some people argue that you’re not entitled to have everything unlockable in a reasonable fashion without having to pay, and others will argue that yes, you are, you paid for it.
The issue of DLC and unlockables can get complicated, at the end of the day we’re in favor of supporting developers as much as possible when they’re being fair to us, the players. Is it unfair for Ubisoft to expect people to pay hundreds of dollars, or to spend years, in order to get the full experience, or should people not worry so much about being completionists?
Here are some reactions from around the web:
“See, this is Ubisoft’s response to our current gaming culture of microtransactions. As you have eloquently demonstrated, it is difficult for a free to play player (albeit 60$ has already been donated) to make progress against a player that has purchased steel. Even steel itself follows a model; create a fake currency, give it a relative name and token value against the dollar (roughly 1000 steel = 1 USD), and train players to trade their real currency for the fake one…” – ndl17, via reddit
“Its a scam! but whoever falls for it he deserves to be robbed!” – QUIMICOMORTAL, via wccftech.com
“Wanna see an online game done perfectly right? Go play GTA online, yes it does have microtransactions but thats for the lazy bum, if you have a good team of 4 players then you’ll be able to unlock and own almoat everything in about a month or 2 seeing and you can make millions from heists and other missions.” – suli559, via wccftech.com
“Sadly fanboys will be okay with getting fucked over even when we start seeing more and more signs pointing to the game milking out content i.e. new combat emotes and new ornaments. I wouldn’t be surprised with the speculation of Ninja and Centurion costing 15k each end up being true.” – ApexVash, via reddit