Improving Future Projects
When you’re really invested in a game, you just don’t want the experience to end or to run out of content. For MMO-like games such as Destiny and Final Fantasy XIV, the need to produce compelling and consistent endgame content is one that can be problematic and drain a lot of time and resources from developers. Therefore, as we saw with Destiny following the release of The Taken King last year, Bungie opted to introduce microtransaction purchases for emotes, or Sparrow skins. In return, the additional income from these microtransactions went on to fund and bolster the future content that players would already be getting.
They weren’t necessarily getting brand new content that they wouldn’t have otherwise gotten, but every so often something a little different or better than what was originally promised was given to players as a way of paying back their support. It’s a neat way to make the microtransctions merely feel like far smaller payments for content that could potentially be priced far higher, as well as giving you a neat cosmetic tweak. Heck, if you wanted to go really far out with the idea, developers could fully fund new map packs, missions, or expansions from microtransaction purchases. As long as there was a way for players to track the progress against milestones then this could be a great means of avoiding high-priced expansions in the future.
