Mighty Quest For Epic Loot Reins In Pay-To-Win
The Mighty Quest For Epic Loot is an interesting idea - build up a fortress, invade other people's increasingly luxurious castles in the sky, and so on - but it's never been shy about putting microtransactions front-and-center. It was only recently, however, that players rather definitively decided that Ubisoft had taken its mighty quest for players' loot too far. In a nutshell, the dev/pub powerhouse added the ability to purchase anything regardless of level (so long as it could also be snatched up with in-game currency), and players immediately took to burning pay-to-win banners and mounting the heads of piggy banks on stakes. Ubisoft, to its credit, has admitted that it made a boo-boo.
The Mighty Quest For Epic Loot team waved the white flag in a blog post, noting that it plans to roll back some (but certainly not all) monetization options:
"As many of you have noticed, we recently made some changes on how and where we let players spend the game’s premium currency, Blings. The reaction has been rather major and instantaneous: many of you have said that this change has affected the game to a point of causing it major harm – a lot of you feel that the game has become Pay to Win or unbalanced and this is not something that we think is acceptable."
"We’re here today to let you know that we’ve heard your concerns and are acting on them immediately. We realize that letting players purchase machinery upgrades went too far in what we think feels fair to monetize. We are hereby rolling back the major premium currency mechanic changes, which will arrive in game in an upcoming maintenance."
Admittedly, there were complaints about too much monetization before the most recent update, but opinions varied pretty widely. But even if machinery upgrades were just the straw that broke the camel's back, Ubisoft is clearly listening. One would hope, at least, that more wailing and gnashing sparkly white cartoon teeth might prompt more sweeping changes. The game's still in beta for a reason, so we'll see.
Where does the gargling, opinionated gut of RPS fall on this, though? Yay or nay to Mighty Quest For Epic Loot's microtransactions? (Neigh is also an option, if you prefer to express yourself in horse emotions. Remember, RPS is an inclusive environment.)