The thin line between cheating, microtransactions, and poor design

[Cornstalk]

Smash 4 has added a wonderful feature in Equipment and Customs. It was probably the new feature I was most excited for coming from brawl where Balanced Brawl, Brawl+, Brawl-, and Project M all reinvented a good game with simple numeric value changes being the backbone of every mod. While equipment does allow anyone to lightly mod their Smash 4 experience, I find myself daunted by the means of acquiring the tools to fully enjoy this feature.

Currently I am doing technology classes on a condensed program that means I need to treat it like a full time job including homework to succeed. I'm also working seasonal 1-2 days a week. Smash 4 is suppose to be my fun thing. Yet how I want to enjoy the game (the equipment and customs) is blocked by design choice that requires not only excessive repetition, but also luck that is stacked against me because of useless duplicate drops. My growing hatred of the single player modes has me wanting to do my homework or even go to work rather then play Smash 4.

Yet the desire to play the game in general is still strong. If Nintendo were to offer me an equipment/custom pack DLC for $10 or even $20 right now, I would buy it so I wouldn't have to put up with Classic mode anymore. But that in itself is frustrating because the design of the game is so lacking in options that I'm even considering DLC. Trump it by the fact that Nintendo smugly stands by their design choice and won't even consider offering an alternative that I would pay for.

So what am I left with?

Cheating.

I will be buying an Action Replay. I will use it to unlock all the customs and hopefully generate specialty equipment for effects like Smooth Lander. Maybe Nintendo will block me from online for having an altered save. Maybe they won't check or be able to detect that particular aspect. And I don't even care if it causes an online ban. The real point is... their own design for acquiring equipment is terrible. So far they have offered no alternatives or solutions to ease the frustration of their poor choice, and knowing Nintendo, will likely go so far as to stand firmly by their design choice.

So me, as a fan and a consumer, is forced to either grind for tedious and near endless hours on a mode I despise, or reach out to a third party option to basically give the middle finger to a random number generator.


Has anyone else hit this point?
Are devives like an Action Replay a problem, or an early step towards a solution of a better game?

 

[the8thark]

Action Replays are cheating, but not all cheating is about getting an advantage in the game. People use such devices for:
- Things like big heads mode and other crazy fun things.
- To make games harder if they find them too easy
- To make games easier or avoid weeks of grinding
- To see if numbers are capped or what other things can break the game

You fit into this with the "avoidance to grind for weeks on end". Do I personally care if you do this? Not at all. Nintendo might care though and ban you from online. So if I was you I'd not use the AR when vsing anyone else online and I'd do a hard reset (and removal of the AR) of your 3DS between each use of the AR and going online in SSB4. That should minimise the chance of you getting banned. But if the internal checks don't add up and you go online Nintendo might still know, but I think the risk is minimal.

If you want to do this, go ahead, just remember, future patches to SSB4 or your 3DS OS could break AR compatibility with the game.
If after all this, you still want to do it, then good luck I say and have fun.

 

[Belgrim]

I wish they put custom equipment in a shop and it were like the trophy shop. You buy all the custom equipment in the shop, the shop is sold out and you have to wait. Either that or make a smash coin gamble shop where you can blow all your coins buying custom part bags and opening them in hopes you get something good.

 

[SatoshiM]

I'm fine with it. It gives us as players a long term goal to accomplish, and you don't need all the customs/equipment to play the game at a high level to begin with. Duplicates are a bad idea, and it would be nice to have a custom shop (50k coins just sitting there....), but I would be opposed to it being too quick to unlock everything as well.

 

[the8thark]

I am ok if things took ages to earn. I am just not happy with the RNG nature of earning things. It's all about luck, how fast you earn things in the game and that to me is unfair.

 

[Rakurai]

The game can and will deny you online access if you have equipment with stats outside of what's legitimately obtainable (IE, everything that they have codes for).

I also haven't had to spend more then around a hour to obtain all of the customs for a given character, but maybe I'm just lucky. I'm not really bothered by having to "grind" because I like getting high scores. I still agree that being able to get duplicates of customs and Mii items is really dumb, though.

 

[Comorant]

The whole RNG element behind any form of customization is frustrating to begin with, and the fact that you can't use coins to diminish that seems like a missed chance. Why do I have to go through hundreds of Luigi Caps just to get the Captain Falcon helmet? Why do I have to get 20 duplicates of old custom moves when all I want is the last move for this one character? Why can't you trade your duplicates of stuff? I'll never understand any of it.