[BoorishBears]

You setup a strawman (perhaps unintentionally) with this sentence:

> Currency is a resource

by ignoring the context of the comment you replied to, and the rest of your comment just builds upon that.

Currency in this context is not just a resource, it's specifically resources tied into a system of microtransactions.

So that includes currency you buy directly with money and currency that is accepted alongside purchasable currency. Having Rubies, Emeralds, and Gold as three different currencies obviously doesn't mean anything special in isolation. Why would having X resource types in a game be special or predatory in isolation?

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What makes it predatory is when only Rubies and Gold can be purchased with money, and some items can be purchased with Emeralds or Rubies, and the pricing for Rubies and Gold are different... the end result is muddying the actual costs of items, and making it more difficult for players to only spend once.

The main MO behind systems like that is to make one currency more important at the start, for example, by letting it get you ahead on core mechanics. Then in the later game having content like skins and characters be locked behind another currency which you're now encouraged to buy having naturally accumulated enough of the first currency through gameplay.

[klodolph]

To be honest I’m baffled by this comment. I’m not really trying to argue against anybody or against any specific viewpoint so the idea that I set up a strawman has me confused.

If you’re talking about rubies, emeralds, and gold, can you explain where those come from? Maybe provide a link?

As far as I know, in Mario Kart Tour the key limited currency is rubies. You can exchange rubies for coins, fire them into a pipe to get gacha, or various other things. This is similar to the other freemium games that I’ve played. Maybe my understanding of Mario Kart Tour is incorrect or incomplete.

Yes, there are multiple forms of currency, but only rubies are really limited. The other currencies can more or less be earned freely by playing the game (if I understand the game correctly). The ruby economy exists to get you to spend cash on the game. Likewise, in Hades, the weird economy of titan’s blood, diamonds, and nectar is what encourages you to complete the game using different combinations of weapons and heat levels.

[BoorishBears]

> So that includes currency you buy directly with money and currency that is accepted alongside purchasable currency

Mario Kart Tour is letting you trade one currency that is paid for another that is earned. That "taints" the currency that can be earned by allowing them to use it to hide the real cost of an item.

And to top it off here Mario Kart is artificially limiting how many of the "earned" currency you can actually earn per day.

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You're also getting caught up on non-existent currencies that were named as digs at pay-to-win shovelware... this isn't about a literal game with "Rubies Emeralds and Gold"* it's about how currency X Y and Z are intermeshed to keep people buying.

* Rubies is one of the premier cliched names for premium currency in a P2W game, it's not unique to MK...

https://clickerheroes.fandom.com/wiki/Rubies https://war-dragons-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Rubies https://twitter.com/TWD__Survivors/status/148019707811037593... https://gamermovil.com/free-rubies-dangerous-fellows/ https://mytona.helpshift.com/hc/en/5-cooking-diary/faq/318-r... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0QwrCfYnVE

[klodolph]

> You're also getting caught up on non-existent currencies that were named as digs at pay-to-win shovelware... this isn't about a literal game with "Rubies Emeralds and Gold"* it's about how currency X Y and Z are intermeshed to keep people buying.

Okay, what you said was unclear and I asked for clarification. I guess if you were trying to get me to fall into a trap, you won.

[BoorishBears]

There's no trap here, and from your other reply you didn't even read the whole article. Maybe that's an additional source of your confusion.

[klodolph]

I did read the whole article. It was your comments that confused me. Maybe I just don’t understand what you’re saying, or maybe you’re just bad at explaining things clearly. I’m not sure. You are free to either clarify your point, or mock me for not understanding what you wrote, and it sounds like you’re choosing the second option.

[BoorishBears]

There's a third option you omitted: That the first comment was clear, that the second comment clarified, that other commenters have clarified, and you still don't grasp it, so I'm not inclined to keep spoon feeding you this.

For example, you clearly did not read the whole thing, or definitely didn't understood what you read, when your other reply was

> Rubies are the limited currency here. These are handed out according to a timed schedule (slow drip)

> Gold can be farmed. You just need to be decent at playing the game.

When something like 5 slides are spent explaining the coin system, explaining that they are also drip fed by capping how many players can earn per day, that coins can not be unlocked just by playing well: some of the objectives require using specific locked characters.

And looking this up myself to verify it's even worse: There are paid passes that don't remove this limit but only increase it?! So you pay to still be capped on your daily progression??

It almost seems like you're a victim of this type of game and so for you, what the rest of us see as predatory, you see as perfectly normal. You keep saying things like "just for the impatient or unskilled" without understanding how little of this system has to do with being a test of skill, and how much of it has to do with extracting more money from people.

[Linosaurus]

In Mario kart, the dollar -> ruby -> gold -> toad chain (from the OP) is designed to obfuscate the cost and get players to spend more money than if it was just dollar -> toad.

Multiple currencies (that can be indirectly bought for dollars) is thus a symptom of a game designed to remove my money.

You seemed to be suggesting that we should not be skeptical of this, because similar game design elements can be used for other reasons.

[klodolph]

That matches my original understanding of how the game works, but I have a different interpretation of why it works that way.

Rubies are the limited currency here. These are handed out according to a timed schedule (slow drip) or at a slow enough rate that you don’t want to wait for them. Playing the game more is not a good strategy for getting more rubies, because it’s either too slow or simply doesn’t work at all.

Gold can be farmed. You just need to be decent at playing the game. Anything with a cost in gold can be purchased through ordinary gameplay. People playing the game will tend to play the game -> win gold -> get toad, rather than going the dollars -> rubies -> gold route.

The rubies -> gold exchange is there for people who are unskilled, impatient, or otherwise unwilling to play the game to earn gold. To be honest, I don’t think this exchange is there to obscure the dollar cost of buying characters in coins, because you’re supposed to be buying better characters with rubies in the first place.

I don’t play Mario Kart Tour, but a friend sat me down and explained all the predatory mechanics it has to try and get you to spend money. He went into detail about how the pipe works, the different currencies, etc. My own experience is with a game called Mahjong Soul. Mahjong Soul has jade and coins (and some other irrelevant currencies). Jade is the dollar-equivalent currency. You can’t earn it through gameplay. You can exchange jade for coins, but since you can earn coins by playing the game (daily quests, winning matches, etc) you are probably not going to make that exchange. You instead spend the jade on summons to earn new characters and outfits.

This is just the general formula I’ve observed. Any normal game will have currencies 1..N which can be earned through gameplay. The freemium / microtransaction games will often just add some dollar-equivalent currency, like rubies in Mario Kart Tour, or jade in Mahjong Soul. That dollar-equivalent currency can be exchanged for gacha (in both games) or exchanged for inferior, farmable currency (in both games).