Just like with many other (not all) services, we pay the same fee but everyone gets varied degrees of usage. In a typical month, I might have 12 days actually being home where I can do anything. But my internet bill is the same whether I’m away or if I had a normal 9-5 non-traveling job where I was home every night like normal people. Same for a MMOG. I’m home less than half the month but paying the same as the people who can play every night. Some people can play all day, every day. I just ask if I am getting my $15 worth of enjoyment out of what I am able to do in the time I have available. A lot of the time I am forcibly solo because I’m usually free in the mornings when normal people are at work. But if I can get into a group to accomplish group content, great! If I can play at night and do a dungeon or a raid, even better! I don’t demand that for my limited time at home, my $15 should get me a free solo pass into every pixel of content. If I choose to not group or partake of options to see specialized content in the game, then I am locking myself out of it as a result of that decision. Choice and consequence. I don’t get to point fingers and blame the developers for daring to have multiplayer content in these massively multiplayer games that I can’t play because I refuse to play with others.

Then again, that $15 itself now means less than it did 10 years ago because my job pays more so I can shrug it off and not think twice about it. But there was a time when that $15 was a much bigger concern.

But I think you find the pizza example rediculous and perhaps even a rip off. Yet you don’t map that rediculousness to ‘pay full price even though you can be locked out of full content’ mmorpgs.

For myself, I have certain values in me that see that as rediculous and even a rip off.

Now you’ve struck me as having those values too. Now either I’m genuinely wrong and you don’t have them (I really mean I may be wrong, not just saying it as if it’s not possible for me to be wrong). Or you do have them and your in contradiction to your own values.

When it comes to a shooter, though, at no point does being solo — whether intentionally or because no one wanted you in their squad — “lock you out” of any content, you’re just getting a solo experience while running the chance that most of the other players on your team are cooperating in squads, communicating, making strategies, whatever. Some people just flat don’t like playing with other people and that’s fine, if a bit strange at times that they elect to play multiplayer games at all.

Then again I find myself in situations quite often where I can see the validity of the expression “these multiplayer games would be great if it weren’t for all the other players.”

I’ll put it this way – you buy into a game. I’m the leader of the only group there – and I decide not to have you on my team. You can’t do any of the content I’m doing – how does it make sense that another player can block you from content you just bought into?

Now I’ll grant with WOW, I was fine with their battlegrounds because no other player could lock you out from them. Did alot of BG because of that. And from what I hear WOW these days has changed it’s dungeon LFG to be alot more like a battleground que.

But the traditional model is some other player determines if you can get what you’ve payed for. If CCP repeat the traditional model, it’s bogus.

In the shooters I’ve mentioned, namely Battlefield 2142 and DUST 514, you won’t be forced to join a squad or listen to the Commander. If you want to be a rogue, that’s fine. (Well, some 2142 servers set rules that you must join a squad within X seconds or be booted, but those are rare. That clan is paying the bills to run the server and if they demand even a tiny bit of cooperation, that’s their prerogative.) Again, I’ll liken it to a MMOG where you can solo if you want, but the game also has team-based options available for a richer experience if you want it. Not sure why you’re so opposed to that.

The point I was slowly arriving at is that the game developers don’t actually print these things on the box. That’s why food has it’s ingrediants listed on the side – it doesn’t rely on customers being ‘educated’ on what the ingrediants are.

It’s not asked for. It’s bait and switch.

If you’re an educated consumer (ie. you know what the game is about before you buy it) then you have “asked for” the experience — the Commander; teamwork; cooperation; all of it — by nature of being a player of that game. There are umpteen thousand shooters out there that are all about the Solo Hero; this isn’t one of them. Just like if you’re a big “solo, screw everyone else” in a MMOG you wouldn’t be asking into a group or a raid if you plan on soloing and not working with the group or raid. Not sure how to be clearer on that point.

And on booting, I’m wondering if it fits into a ‘do unto others’ framework. For example, say your about to boot me but I have this magic button that boots all of the rest of the group. And you can’t group for 24 hours after. Would it seem right that on someones whim, your locked out of game content?

On balance, one paid for extra bullet does effect balance. It’s not a question of whether it affects balance. It’s a question by how much does it affect balance. Same for a paid for sniper rifle with -1% sway vs one with -90% sway – it’s not a binary condition that one does not affect balance and the other does. They both affect balance – just one more so than the other. So I guess there’s no common ground to be had on that one – it’s not a binary condition to me, at all.

But again, some people just prefer the fast run-and-gun, spray-and-pray tight compact gameplay of COD and arena shooters where they don’t have to play with anyone else. For that matter, even in a more meaningful and tactical shooter, no one is coming to your house and holding a gun to your head if you don’t help your team. But much like in MMOG’s, you may find yourself booted out of the group because we’re in that game for the bigger picture and the feeling of a more meaningful victory through teamwork and coordination. When we’re in the mood to be a Spartan we can load up Halo 3, but we don’t try to be Master Chief in every single shooter just because all of them gives us guns to pewpew with.

And no, as I said earlier about purchasing gear, I don’t mind so long as everything is balanced. Most shooters with weapon choices within a given category will balance each one so a player can find one that fits his style but none are “better” than the others from an overall standpoint. Say within sniper rifles there are five different rifles to choose from. Each will have differing levels of accuracy, damage, rate of fire, etc. Giving “one extra bullet” like your example is not balance-changing, but being able to buy a sniper rifle with -90% sway affects balance IF a gun like that is not also available to unlock without buying it because now the paying snipers have a rifle with only 10% sway so they can headshot like a sonovabitch — eliminating 90% of the need of any player skill at aiming — while non-payers still have to use 100% of their aiming skill while sniping. Becoming clear yet?

But as I understand it with raids, the raid leader is just telling you the set PVE sequence of stuff you need to do to beat the PVE boss. It’s not really telling you how to play the game, it’s more like telling you the answer to how to beat the boss.

Here it’s against other players, I’m assuming – there is no answer how to beat the other side, because it’s not a prefabricated PVE boss.

I think a raid leader works because he helps everyone know the answer to the boss. I think always defaulting to having a ‘raid leader’ in PVP is just having someone telling you how to play the game. Now as an individual you might decide you know someone who would be good at it, and it would aid both of you for him to be in command. That’s your own choice. But to be forced into it by game design – well, you said it yourself to a degree with your ‘vote out incompetent leaders’ thoughts.

On challenge, you seem to be equating any money purchase as instantly buying their way out of challenge or into near invincibility. If they bought a gun that’s the same in all respects as the one you have except it has one more bullet, it’s not a jump into buying their way out of challenge or having near invincibility. Even if they win because of having one more bullet at the end. It just takes more skill to overcome that one bullet advantage.

It’s a question of how many extra bullets, so to speak, the bought stuff gives you. It’s not that any extra bought advantage makes everything crash and burn.