The game is free to play. If cosmetics are the only micro transaction, that’s actually good.
this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2025
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Depends on the implementation.
If the promotion of mtx.is jarring or overwhelming then even limiting to cosmetics sucks. If something ends and there are multiple click through screens encouraging players to by mtx and other ads within the game to buy the mtx it can become a chore to ignore. Even if gameplay itself is not impacted, the things that happen outside of gameplay can deag down the whole experience.
An example would be those stupid unskippable season pass screens where the bar goes up slowly and it reminds you of what you didn't get becsuse tou didn't buy the season pass. A few seconds each time, sure, but it adds up and is clearly trying to goad you into spending money. That shit sucks even if it limited to cosmetics.
I would rather pay $60 to own and be able to fully play the game. However, my response came from my perception of surprise and doom-and-gloom by the community when we already knew it would be free-to-play.
If a game is going to have mtx, they shouldn't be charging for it during a prerelease. They have multiple ethical ways to handle it that would garner better feedback.
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Leave it out entirely and focus on the gameplay. That is what should be selling the game anyway.
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Have the mtx but without a way to pay real money. Give the players the option to 'purchase' in game currency and give them a running total.
The latter would be reset at release, but would gather feedback on what people want to spend and if the promo process is well implemented.
Both would run counter to the actual purpose of the vast majority of mtx which is fleecing whales and this is EA.
The most ethical implementation of mtx that I know of is actually for a paid game, Helldivers 2. The in game promo stuff is minimal and does not negatively impact the menus or interacting with the ship. The option to buy stuff doesn't use dark patterns, but it is easily available. When they did set prices too high for a collaboration thing they apologized due to feedback and gave the other half of the stuff that would have been for sale to every single player. It is basically the exact opposite of Call of Duty's mtx.
I’m not counting on EA to be ethical.
If I can fully play the game - all areas, skateable features, tricks - without involvement in MTX, I will be both satisfied and surprised.
My guess is that there is only one skate park and simple character creation that is free for everyone. Everything else is behind paywall. Want pink shorts and green hair? want to skate around the city or in new park? want a new deck? open the wallet.
I hope when it's released you can turn off the MMO features and play solo. I just want to get high, bomb hills, and watch my dude get all of his bones obliterated like the good ol days. I don't need some clown decked out in a $100 dinosaur costume telling me I suck ass to heighten the experience.
EA and micro transactions. Name a more iconic duo.
The only other two certainties in life are death and taxes.
Skater XL + Mods
There's also Session, which is pretty good
I haven't tried it in awhile, but tried it a few times over the years and always preferred Skater XL (just felt more like Skate to me), but I need to see how Session has progressed.
One of my favorite Skater XL mods is the ability to go into slow-mo whenever you start a trick. Really cool/fun. Also really satisfying to make your own skateboards in the game.
I was debating between the two when I was first looking at them. I guess Session is supposed to be the more "realistic" one, and it's pretty tough actually. Each stick controls each foot (left stick for left foot, right stick for right foot) but you can of course change the settings to be as arcadey as you want. There's even a control setting to make it play exactly like Skate 2/3. There aren't many maps to play in, but the maps that are there are pretty good.
When I first got the game in 2021 or '22, the maps didn't even have cars or other pedestrians, but they added those in one of the updates in the last couple years (tells you how much I play it lol).
I'll also say that the music is kinda lacking in the game. Like there are two or three "stations" you can listen to based on genres, and there are only a few songs in each, but the classic "turn the game's music volume all the way down and pull up a playlist on YouTube/Spotify" move always works.
That's the same feeling I had. Session just felt more incomplete/rough around the edges. To those points, Skater XL basically uses the Skate control scheme, which I find the right balance of skill-based/fun. I think the soundtrack is pretty great with the likes of Modest Mouse, Interpol, Band of Horses, etc. But also pretty limited. As for levels, the site I linked above also has 1,056 mod maps you can add, so that's definitely not an issue.
Are we even surprised anymore? Just don’t buy it.
It's free to play so no need to pay for anything
I have to say, I was pretty neutral on this coming in, but reading all the people posturing anger while clearly not having any awareness of what the game is supposed to be or even reading the article is getting kind of annoying.
That's the plan.
It's free to play, no fucking shit
You can spend real-world money on a virtual currency called San Van Bucks, which in turn is used to buy cosmetic items.
I hate this but if it's just cosmetics and the game price is fair I'll be ok with it. I know the price is going to be a full on AAA release and they will still cram this into it.. but I can hope.
It should, according to other, be free to play
The price is nothing, apparently the game is free to play.
It'd be pretty suprising if it didn't have microtransactions.
lol, imagine a studio developing a game for half a decade and then just sharing it out.
"Don't tell our staff, but it was a labour of love and they're all being let go because we're out of investor funds. Also don't tell the investors. Or the publisher. In fact don't say anything until we've made it to Montenegro."
Man, that's a fair point. If you want to be mad at something be mad at the five year dev cycle into an early access launch. I'm not even saying it's the devs or EA's fault. Making games is hard. And expensive. But definitely hard.
How is this news? This news the plan all along, they were quite vocal about it. Free to play games are always funded by mtx.
I know this is an unpopular opinion here but I think the game looks dope, having followed development since the beginning. The animations look sick and I’m always there for another skateboarding game. I just won’t buy any skins.
EA and Microtransactions, go together like peanut butter and jelly.
"Mom, I want Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4 Remastered."
"We have a skateboard game at home."
How to immediately kill your product before launch, step 1
I don't play skater games, but like whats so wrong with all the old ones? Didn't they just remake Tony Hawk? How can these games be so different? I get playing 'new' games in your favorite genre, but I feel like you can only do so much with this formula, kind of like guitar hero.
Sometimes you just want more. Doesn't have to be drastically different, just fresh
New environments, new tricks, higher quality graphics, fixed bugs, runs on the current console (since backwards compatibility isn't always a thing). Multiplayer, if Skate 3 didn't have it already.
Fixed bugs... Lol.
...Yeah. I just read the playtest email like 5 minutes ago and saw that. The way they worded it like it was an opportunity is also Pretty Shit™ lol. I almost hope the game sucks now so I don't have to be conflicted about it.
Don’t give a crap that (or if) this is free, I’d still play Tony hawk over this every day of the week. Excited for new 3 release
Soon EA new game will be like old upgrades game you want the start button 5$ the setting button 10$ save slot that be a 30$ with 5$ more for all additionnal one
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All we need is Skate 3 via Xenon Recomp: infinite mods.
I mean... yeah, that's normally when you add stuff to a game. Especially this stuff.
Adding it in the closed alpha though is a new level of greed & impatience
It really, really isn't. Guessing it's testing.
As per the article, they're refunding all purchases at launch.
It's a free to play game, there is absolutely nothing newsworthy about this. Path of Exile 2 just launched on early access with a bunch of microtransactions AND a paywall and people were absolutely delighted with it.
They are 'refunding' the virtual currency. I would bet at least some lf the items purchased during prerelease will cost more on release.
But the main thing is they are basically trying the 'free to play' version of preordering, where they get your money before releasing a finished game.
The implicit perception of value in this comment is making my head spin. We all realize that in-game cosmetics aren't real, right?
Also, yes, they are doing the free to play version of preordering. It's called Early Access and it's supposed to happen later this year. See also Path of Exile 2 and Baldur's Gate 3.
People are working overtime to get their knee-jerk reaction to be retroactively justified here. The thing is, I would get being mad at this being a F2P game in the first place. I would get being mad at it being funded through microtransactions. Those are meaningful changes from the previous trilogy that I don't particularly care for.
It's the being mad on the spot at a haf-misunderstood headline depicting something entirely unremarkable that rubs me the wrong way.
We all realize that in-game cosmetics aren’t real, right?
Yes, but the unavoidable advertising of those cosmetics frequently drag down the experience when there are multiple click through screens and progress bars on battle passes the player didn't buy and a ton of other negatives that have nothing to do with whether cosmetics affect game play. Free to play frequently means 'annoying nag menus'.
I happened to focus on getting their money early and calling a reset of their fake money a refund being misleading.
It also happens that my experience with early access free to play was Multiversus, where they took a moderately OK early access game that added mtx, then went silent for months and came back as a trash version of the same game with even more mtx. This being EA I expect them to go even harder into the mtx at the expense of game play.
You just made all that up. None of that is even tangentially related to the thing that actually happened.
I mean, now we're arguing that this weird ploy to extract more money for cosmetics is probably going to harm gameplay (even though it's unrelated to gameplay) because a different game from a different company also had MTX which were also not related to the bad gameplay changes they made.
I don't know what to argue there. It's entirely irrational.
To be clear, it's not irrational that F2P games often push monetization in intrusive ways that are annoying. It's not irrational that Multiversus had a very weird history and a poor relaunch. But the way you're connecting those pieces along with a healthy dose of entirely disconnected preconceptions based on branding is completely off the rails.
This is why this is so frustrating to me. People just want to be mad at things because some other things that are unrelated made them mad once and they want to just smear the anger a bit. It's pure mob mentality and I fully admit that it pisses me off in games as a proxy for how much of it informs modern society and politics in general. Which I guess I'm doing, too, a little bit. But still.
People just want to be mad at things because some other things that are unrelated made them mad once and they want to just smear the anger a bit.
Or maybe they are annoyed by the things they gave examples of instead of being some kind of crazy conspiracy.
But it IS a crazy conspiracy... theory. "Skate testing its MTX during an alpha means that they will be a scam at launch and/or impact gameplay because Multiversus also had MTX and that had a bad relaunch" is a complete non-sequitur. This is cavemen sacrificing goats to make it rain levels of random event association.
So I have to conclude the emotional layer is what matters here. Being mad loudly online at a frequent punching bag with a bad reputation is sheer mob-induced dopamine and that's why that headline exists and why this conversation happens. And why social media exists and is killing liberal democracy, but that's probably beyond the scope of this thread.
Being mad loudly online at a frequent punching bag with a bad reputation is sheer mob-induced dopamine and that’s why that headline exists and why this conversation happens.
Or maybe they are a punching bag because of the things they repeatedly do, did you consider that?
It isn't like multiversus is the only one that did this. I clearly said they were an example of a larger trend.
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