Shadow of War Microtransaction Controversy

Sad really, it looks awesome, but I'm not going to buy a game to get hit with paywalls disguised as difficulty spikes and nearly impossible boss battles. Not saying it will happen, but psychologically, every players mind is going there. If they were releasing the game as free to play with MTs, that's one thing. I will stick to a $1/hr on F2P games if I enjoy them. I have spent quite a bit on GTA O (Technically F2P, I paid for GTA V) but I have a couple thousand hours in Online and they've consistently added great content to it. I don't expect the same 'generous' behavior around this game.

The microtransactions effect every player. Every time the studio could have put a bit more into QA balance testing, they just slap in microtransactions and make the playerbase either grind for hours to complete a mission, or empty their wallets to progress at a normal rate. It's ridiculous to think that microtransactions only are a detriment to online competitive games. 

If anything they're less of a threat there, since it only matters for the first few weeks/months of play until everyone can earn their gear. After that, MTs become almost a good thing in MP games, allowing a new player, starting months after the game release can get up to speed without needing to grind. It's the exact opposite for single player only games, it means that at best, players will feel like the game wants them to grind/buy currency, at worst, the devs will skew the difficulty at certain points in order to cause players to pay extra to get back to the progression induced dopamine high.

You're missing the issue, or more the potential issue. The fear is they will make the game less enjoyable to play, even slightly, or gradate it so that players end up buying microtransactions at some point in their playthrough. Did you know that games built on microtransactions, like Candy Crush, will fluctuate the difficulty at certain points in order to get you addicted, then remove your ability to play or progress, causing you to buy in game currency to get back your dopamine hit? 

What is to say this destructive practice won't find its way into this game? Even if it doesn't, confirmation bias now exists and players will be looking for it. Anything that could be chalked up to a balance issue in a normal game will now fall under the 'pay to win' category. Last time I checked, there were ways to play a game if you sucked, were bored, didn't want to be challenged, etc. They were called a difficulty slider and cheat codes respectively. Both free of charge. That's what this amounts to in the end: Buying softcore cheat codes and an easy difficulty option.

Because they have to reduce the quality of the game for those who do not pay for the MTs, so that there is an incentive to fork over the cash.

For example: Raising the price of items in game so that the best items can not be obtained without either A) Grinding, or B) Paying real money.

Basically, the games full price has been increased over $60.

Zechio

If you pay for a box, use the orcs in that box to defend your online fortress, what happens? Someone can attack that fortress and kill that orc. A super elite legendary orc can be beaten. It's not some unbeatable thing. We don't even know what we would get if our fortress withstands the attack.

And the best items have always been obtainable by grinding. If you want a specific item find a orc in the clan that drops that set item, level him up train him and then kill him. Find a awesome item too low level? Spend in game currency to level that up. 

This isn't a free to play game though. You have to have already paid $60 for a single player game. You already paid for all of that stuff, but they want you to pay again. What's next? Having to pay to equip it also? Why not pay for the slot to equip it in, and pay for it to be functional...etc.

We're not talking free patch content, or even a cheap game/dlc that is then subsidized with MTs. This is a full priced game, that is double-dipping the cost. You paid for all of that stuff already, you should get it without having to resort to tedium. They are intentionally making the $60 game worse for people who paid full price, to push them into paying more and more money.

This feels like they saw GTA raking in the cash, and decided to tack on something like that...but forgot the shark cards were not in at launch, and that GTA Online has had extremely frequent major free content updates. There is 0 indication they could come even remotely close to that.