After seeing all of this hate for EA and Battlefront II concerning how long it takes to unlock heroes and how the micro transactions are structured I thought I would put my opinion out there. And please read all of it before impulse commenting mid-way through.

I don’t think EA is doing anything wrong. In fact, I think the players are the problem.

So many people as of late have become so used to instant-gratification. Things these days are so quick that people aren’t managing their expectations. You can order food without leaving your house, you can go online shopping and have it delivered to you, you don’t have to move to talk to your friends and family, you can just pick up your phone and call / text them. People (particularly younger people) have become too used to getting things *now*. Pretty much whatever you want, as long as you can pay for it, you can get *now*. People are starting to forget that things take effort to achieve. That new job, that shiny new car, a good looking body, healthy relationships with people, they all take effort to achieve. Before the age of micro transactions, to varying degrees, it took effort to unlock what you wanted in the game. Take Smash Bros for example. A significant chunk of playable characters are locked behind achievements in the game. “Do X amount of this to unlock X character”. It took time, effort and patience to unlock these things. The title of that post “Seriously? I paid $80 to have Vader locked?” would have been taken differently if say smash bros had just come out and it was titled “Seriously? I payed $80 to have Young Link locked?”. OP would have come across incredibly entitled.

Imagine for a second that BFII didn’t have any micro transactions, and all you were left to just grind your way to unlock them. There wouldn’t be nearly as much outrage. It would just be considered a difficult game to unlock everything for. The fact that they offer a payed shortcut to the top shouldn’t be outrageous in the slightest. If there were no micro transactions, people would still reach the stage they would have if they had purchased their way to the top anyway. It’s just going to take longer. If you bought this version of BFII say, 6 months after it came out you would have run into the same kind of people with these higher level heroes and unlocks anyway. Now imagine a game like Cuphead, which people largely consider to be a difficult game to complete. The general consensus is that the game is fun, but hard. However, had they included the option to pay to get overpowered gear and boost their way past the bosses, people would be outraged. They would be called scummy and the game would not have been received as well as it was.

The fact that people can pay their way to the top doesn’t mean they have a solid advantage over you anyway. $$ does not = Skill. There is a clear difference between a player who has invested countless hours into a game and knows it inside out VS little Timmy who bought the gear with Mommy’s credit card and has no idea how to play at the level their opponent does.

People who buy their way to the top of a game are simply ruining it for themselves. What is there left to do once you you pay your way to the top? What was the point of buying the game just to skip the actual gameplay? And if you “Don’t like the grind”, my point still stands: Why did you buy the game? Why would you buy a game that presents itself as a grind fest, but don’t want to grind it? Maybe the game just isn’t for you. If you don’t want to grind the 10 hours it takes to unlock a hero (I believe EA has changed it from 40 to 10, please correct me if I am wrong), don’t want to pay your way to the top and the gameplay outside of the grind looks bland and boring, then maybe BFII is just a bad game? Just because it is star wars, looks really pretty and has amazing graphics does not automatically make it a good game.

So many people who complain about these games (**games like BFII that aren’t even out yet by the way. So why are you complaining about something you don’t have?**) will probably buy it anyway and continue to complain. If a game looks terrible and “scummy” then simply don’t buy it. Gather enough information to make a wise choice about the game you are about to buy before you do. If you know full well the game has a business model that you don’t like but you buy it anyway the only person at fault is you. You didn’t have to buy the game. No one forced you to.

The only reason EA (and many other companies) and including lootboxes, buyable credits and other ways to skip the game without playing it is because people keep buying them. If people weren’t buying them these companies would not put them in the game to begin with because it’s not profitable. The solution isn’t to [mass downvote](https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsBattlefront/comments/7cff0b/seriously_i_paid_80_to_have_vader_locked/dppum98/), [boycott](https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/7cog1u/can_we_please_boycott_star_wars_battlefront_2/) or [to invite mass outrage](https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/7cffsl/we_must_keep_up_the_complaints_ea_is_crumbling/). **The solution is to just not buy the things they are trying to get you to buy**. Be smart with the way you spend your money. If you don’t want to support the way BFII wants to make money off youm instead of buying it then going online to complain that you want it changed, just don’t buy it from the start. And if you do, then just don’t buy the micro transactions. If you aren’t enjoying the game because it’s so grindy, play something else. The solutions to these **non-problems** are simple. We all need to calm down and take a good look at what **we** are doing.

**It’s not the fault of the company for designing these games like this if you’re going to keep buying them anyway. You are the one fuelling this. It all stops when we all stop buying them.**