What game takes the prize for having the worst micro-transactions.

[Garrett]

I'm pretty sure the Dungeon Keeper mobile game is designed around basic mechanics where you're trying to do something that in a game should take a second, in real life would take 30 minutes, but in that game takes 24 hours real time. You're supposed to pay to skip those waits. Imagine if EA made a Sims game where building a 1m section of a wall takes 12 hours. Yeah it doesn't even take that long to build a real piece of wall.

[Astraea]

I was pretty shocked by The Quartering's video about CoD's colored reticle microtransaction, but that was just aesthetic.

I made the mistake of buying Fortnite when it came out and you could only buy better weapons if you were lucky enough to get it in paid lootboxes. It was a disgrace and never touched the game again after finding out how it worked.

So, in short: I paid 60 bucks for a game that was going f2p soon after , plus I couldn't get weapon upgrades because it was behind a paywall.

[Damienriven]

Was removed due to controversy but can also count on RIFT on having very crazy micro-transactions any time of the year.

[Atraxian]

I tend to avoid games with microtransactions and freemium gameslike the plague, so I'm not really in for the game itself, but if I had to vote for the worst single microtransaction I would vote for the 1$ red circle reticule in Black Ops 4.
Yet I see that there is a nice list of candidates in this thread.

[zeorhymer]

For me it's a toss up between Dungeon Keeper mobile and FF All the Bravest.

[humanevil]

Vega Conflict (hybrid mobile / pc game) - you have six fleets to work with, any fleet worth using will take something like 24 hours to repair, and you can only repair one fleet at a time, so unless you use lots of purchased currency, you end up playing for a few minutes then repairing for a few days once you get past low to mid level. If you're not prepared to coin up, you'll just get spammed by people who have deep pockets relentlessly. The latest technology upgrades are gated behind time limited events that last maybe 3 days, which are next to impossible to do without the latest/greatest tech and/or lots of in-game currency. They even blatantly designed the UI to encourage accidental coin expenditures and refused to implement a confirmation dialog. They basically sandwiched a button that will spend potentially large amounts of in game currency between two other UI buttons that are very commonly used... on the mobile platforms, these buttons are small enough that if you have adult sized hands, you will certainly hit the wrong one evntually. When asked to take measures to mitigate this, the developer initially was open to discussion, then suddenly took a 180 and said it couldn't be implemented due to unforseen technical limitations, then proceeded to close/delete/etc any further posts asking to revisit it even though it was acknowledged as a big problem.

I stayed in that game as long as I could stand, more for the fact that I was part of a great core team of people who had been together through a few other games, eventually, that wasn't enough to keep me playing even as a casual/free player because the experience was made completely frustrating, and the games forums became completely toxic, with the community managers shutting down any threads that even had valid complaints, and users divided into people that rsee Ted the over monetization, and the people who appeared to have bottomless wallets telling free players to "coin up or shut up".

the game quickly degenerated, and all focus shifted to monetization being prioritized over basic game design principals.

that company made a far worse p2w game before vega conflict called battle pirates as the events they held where you could win the next best ship hull were short enough that unless you played 24 hrs non stop you would run out of time due to excessive repair times plus you couldnt build the a fleet of the best ships before the next event because it took to long unless you spent money to speed the builds up...kixeye is one of the worst companys for p2w/microtransations ive ever seen

[Jeftah]

Fire Emblem: Echoes has pretty scummy DLC practices... I mean, at least you *get* relatively decent content, but it's so overpriced, the store itself recommends that you buy the more "cost effective" bundle packs whenever you try to buy an individual item.

[Vespo27]

I've played ones that are much worse than GOH... at least with GOH you will eventually be able to grind out everything in the game, even though it will take months. You won't be able to prepare for the events properly without spending, but once you get a few matched squads leveled up enough it becomes viable for free players if you don't feel the need to be top dog in the arena.

[Vespo27]

Vega Conflict (hybrid mobile / pc game) - you have six fleets to work with, any fleet worth using will take something like 24 hours to repair, and you can only repair one fleet at a time, so unless you use lots of purchased currency, you end up playing for a few minutes then repairing for a few days once you get past low to mid level. If you're not prepared to coin up, you'll just get spammed by people who have deep pockets relentlessly. The latest technology upgrades are gated behind time limited events that last maybe 3 days, which are next to impossible to do without the latest/greatest tech and/or lots of in-game currency. They even blatantly designed the UI to encourage accidental coin expenditures and refused to implement a confirmation dialog. They basically sandwiched a button that will spend potentially large amounts of in game currency between two other UI buttons that are very commonly used... on the mobile platforms, these buttons are small enough that if you have adult sized hands, you will certainly hit the wrong one evntually. When asked to take measures to mitigate this, the developer initially was open to discussion, then suddenly took a 180 and said it couldn't be implemented due to unforseen technical limitations, then proceeded to close/delete/etc any further posts asking to revisit it even though it was acknowledged as a big problem.

I stayed in that game as long as I could stand, more for the fact that I was part of a great core team of people who had been together through a few other games, eventually, that wasn't enough to keep me playing even as a casual/free player because the experience was made completely frustrating, and the games forums became completely toxic, with the community managers shutting down any threads that even had valid complaints, and users divided into people that rsee Ted the over monetization, and the people who appeared to have bottomless wallets telling free players to "coin up or shut up".

the game quickly degenerated, and all focus shifted to monetization being prioritized over basic game design principals.

[Turnikman228]

A game with potential that has been totally FUBARed, a game initially billed as a follow-up to STALKER: SURVARIUM.

The purchases are not as bad but they pile up too fast and when its over, you can easily accrue 50 to 100$.

Premium currency, premium weapons that are objectively better than others, consumables, stamina system. TOO much stuff to be bought for the game to be remotely fun.

[aileron]

Please tell me you meant 0.99

[Blitzer]

Id say EAs Galaxy of Heroes on mobile. Worst pocket picking ive ever seen £99 for a 4 star Mace Windu character.

[MaxBin2D]

Call of Duty (Advanced warfare I think) only because I think it was the first AAA dev to add gameplay advantage into loot boxes. They put insanely overpowered guns that you could obtain through completely random boxes.

[isturbo1984]

How about Gran Turismo Sport for the PS4? What makes it so bad, is it is a first party exclusive. The game allows you to cheat and just buy any car in the game for $5 a pop. Breaking progression and taking away the competitive edge in online. But it's Sony so... we'll just ignore that ans talk about Fallout 76 some more.

[Hyperweasle]

Should I say Fallout 76? The In-Game store is a joke, Bethesda is selling you some PNG files at $20

I forgot about Fallout 76's ridiculous micro-transactions, at this rate Bethesda will make EA look like a charity organization.