Bribing Your Way to Victory: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

Don't feel like doing a quest to get the reward? Don't care about taking the time to unlock the game's super ultra secrets? Or perhaps you just suck at it?

 

{{examples}}

* The ''[[Munchkin (game)|Munchkin]]'' series of card games has a set of official T-shirts. According to the official tournament rules, wearing one of these shirts grants special powers, such as the ability to draw extra cards and increasing the amount of treasure you get when killing monsters. It also has a series of bookmarks that cancels out the effect of the t-shirts. In fact, all Munchkin related products affect the card game in some way.

** Possibly the most outrageous example ever? [http://www.worldofmunchkin.com/cookie/ A cookie.]

** Somewhat inverted when [[Wizards of the Coast]] released a ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]'' boxset containing tournament-winning decks from two of the best professional Magic players, including several expensive rares. The catch was that the cards had visual notifiers marking them as not tournament-legal, and thus effectively worthless on the resale market.

*** Furthermore, there are 'Limited format' tournaments, where the price of entry (around $20) includes several packs of cards, which the tournament participants must then make decks out of (in some versions, the player is limited to whichever packs were given him at random; in others, the players pass the packs around the table and pick a single card). At the end, cards are kept (though rares are sometimes put aside to be handed out, with higher ranking participants going first). Because cards are chosen non-randomly, this is actually a cheaper method of obtaining the cards you want.

*** ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]'' however also plays this totally straight with the introduction of a new level of rarity. On top of Common, Uncommon and Rare, are the new so-called Mythic Rares—which tend to not only be powerful, but for the tournament-worthy ones, very costly to buy. It used to be you needed to dig back into Arabian Nights for an $80 card, but say hello to the mind sculptor...

** Averted by the [[Star Wars Customizable Card Game]], which managed to work [[Screw the Money, I Have Rules]] ''into'' the rules. Many conflicts in the game are resolved by chance, but instead of rolling dice you draw the top card of your deck and check its "Destiny" value, which goes from 0 to 7. Cards which were rare, powerful and expensive had low Destiny, whereas the common and sucky ones had high values. Thus, players with cheaper cards get more luck. (In the end, it actually didn't work, but it was still a nice try.)

* ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]''! is a major offender (yet not at Munchkin levels), although for very different reasons. UDE has an annoying habit of increasing the number and rarity of cards in the expansion sets before releasing them, as well as making it easy for retailers to pluck those cards out and sell them as singles. The only people able to get the better cards are either rich enough to buy them from the retailer, at high prices; buy whole boxes, at high prices; or have the luck to find an honest retailer.

** Ever since UDE was dropped as a distributor in the West, Konami has continued the practice, but toned down the blatant practice slightly. Their rarities get shuffled, but at most a card doesn't go higher than Ultra Rare (compared to UDE's 'powerful card=highest rarity possible' tactic. The more useful cards get bumped down a bit, like Blackwing - Sirocco of the Dawn, a cornerstone piece in a Blackwing Deck, one very powerful deckstype, is a Common in US, compared to the Japanese Super Rare.

* The ''Illuminati: New World Order'' SubGenius set has a card with a special ability that is activated by sending one dollar to the SubGenius Foundation. The card suggests that the other players require the user to actually mail the dollar.

* You can play ''[[Alteil]]'' for free forever, getting all cards, even. Just don't expect to expand your deck as quickly as those who are willing to dish out dough. Oh, and there are also some cool customization stuff you can get with cash, but it is entirely optional.

* The [[Pokémon (game)|Pokémon Trading Card Game]], as of the [[Pokémon Black and White]] sets, has increased the rarity of the most powerful cards. This is a bane for not only players looking for some of these specific cards, but for collectors, as the ''quantity'' of these cards have increased too, requiring the spending of 3 to 4 times as much money to obtain a complete set than before.

 

* The [[LARP|live-action role-playing game]] ''NERO'' plays this very straight - you can straight out buy experience points with real-world money.

** There was a company which hired temporary workers by paying them in NERO experience points instead of dollars. They had to stop when someone pointed out that they were paying them the equivalent of 67c per hour, which is far below the legal minimum wage. And yet, some of the players preferred this to getting real money!

* The parodic roleplaying game ''Violence: the Role-Playing Game of Egregious and Repulsive Bloodshed'' allows a player to improve his character's stats by paying the [[Game Master]], or by sending money to the game's author.

 

== Video Games ==

* In ''[[Test Drive]] Unlimited 2'', preordering the game from Walmart gives you the most powerful car in the game, the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport, which blows all the other cars away in the majority of competitions, until ''eventually'', some of the non-preorder cars were buffed to make them competitive.

* ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]: Duels of the Planeswalkers'' and its subsequent xpacs each contain numerous decks and cards that can be unlocked through play. Each deck can be unlocked through playing the campaign, and each deck, including the starting decks, have between 15 and 25 additional cards that really ''must'' be unlocked in order for the deck to actually be competitive in online multiplayer play. Each win with each unlocked deck unlocks... one card. So, you either need you endlessly grind the campaign with each and every single deck, you could pay a buck for a full deck unlock.

* In the West, originally, ''[[Pokémon]]'' was marketed so that players ''were'' [[The Power of Friendship|encouraged to make friends]] with each other ''and'' trade their Pokemon around to [[To Be a Master|collect all 150]] of them... [[Broken Aesop|Instead, this taught kids to buy multiple GameBoys and every single cartridge.]] [[Gone Horribly Right|... Win?]]

** At least until the addition of the Global Trade Station in Gen. IV. You can trade for any Pokemon you've seen before. Gen. V also added GTS Negotiations, where you can negotiate with others for ''any'' Pokemon.

** Madden's college counterpart, NCAA 10, is slightly less insane about it. You can pay for dynasty accelerators, such as recruiting reports (they give you a leg up in recruiting new players) and a 'Toughest Places to Play' boost (it bumps your stadium higher on the list of toughest stadiums to play in, which rattles visiting teams). Quite a lot of people, this troper included (who plays on All-American, the second-highest difficulty) don't bother with the accelerators because they're unnecessary. I don't recall if it was ever patched, but there was a lot of controversy over players using the accelerators in Online Dynasty, which gave them an advantage over the other OD players.

* ''[[Bloodline Champions]]'' allows you to obtain all the characters by paying real money for them.

*** It goes without saying that the Nighthawk GT and the Carson Extreme did indeed turn out to be the best cars, and of course they aren't in the same pack. The third car that was competitive with both, the last car in the regular game (a police interceptor edition of a F1 car) was, of course, nerfed too.

* Various box sets of ''[[City of Heroes]], [[City of Villains]],'' or both had special bonus powers available to their purchasers; these are available separately from the game software itself for a small fee. Probably related are the Veteran's Rewards, extra goodies which are received for every three months of subscription to the game; at least two of these are permanent versions of special powers that can only be acquired temporarily through normal play. None of it, however, actually gives a play advantage that can't be acquired (eventually) through normal play.

* In the first ''[[Dead Space (video game)|Dead Space]]'', it's possible to download one of several DLC suits (some of which come with extra weapon skins). While most of them (the Elite and Obsidian) only provided marginal defense, ponying up $4 could either get you the Scorpion Suit (which included three upgraded weapons that fired faster than their original variants) or the Advanced Unitology Suit (which has double the damage resistance of the Scorpion, making it the best protection in the game, plus three upgraded weapons that dealt more damage). [[Disc One Nuke]] and [[Game Breaker]] doesn't begin to describe it.

** In ''[[Dead Space 2]]'', you can buy one of several DLC packs (including any one of nine different suits) that give you small bonuses (5-10% increases to either damage, reload or firing speed). Interestingly, the developers seemed to have learned their lesson from the previous game, because almost all of these suits only give you a small advantage compared to their DLC predecessors.

* In the NCSoft MMORPG ''Dungeon Runners'', the game itself is free to play. However, if you want item storage, stackable recovery items (potions), or indeed to be able to ''use'' any item above the green (2nd tier) quality level - then you have to pay for a subscription. There's also talk about some items being buyable with real money. Two of their rewer releases, Exteel and Aion, have similar things in the works.

** However, quite a few players still pay real money, but no where near as much as the above example.

* Space MMORPG ''[[EVE Online]]'' quickly became tired of Real Money Trading. The Solution? for 15 bucks, you can buy a Game Time Card and "sell" it for in-game money through a system EVE's developers put in themselves. Conversely, if one generates enough in-game currency then one can pay for their subscription entirely in-game without spending a single real-world penny.

** This has been taken to its (il)logical extreme by an [https://web.archive.org/web/20131029014016/http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/65475/page/2 extremely wealthy player financing his entire alliance] by buying GTCs and selling them for in-game currency.

** Also, in Guild Wars, preordering the game or any of the expansions would give the player a special weapon. This weapon usually would be useful well into the middle of the game, and even afterward, could make a good backup. Seeing as how which bonus you'd get depended on where you preordered, this meant most players, if they had any, had one item. There wasn't anything stopping someone from going and getting a second preorder at another store, however, and thus massing more items. The preorder items could also be recalled at any time if they were trashed. The only downside was that they couldn't be traded, as they were customized.

* ''[[Gunbound]]'' allowed its members to purchase exclusive weapons to be used in battles. Every last one of which was a blatant ''[[Game Breaker]]''. Mixed in with the fact that there was no way for the mod to stop them from being used, this is accepted as the reason for Gunbound's death.

** You also have to level up your familiar to make them worth using, which takes time and any item that's dropped by the familiar is dropped so often it's easy for people with lower budgets to buy the items from the mall. So purchasable familiars that unlock content are really there for making money and showing off.

** Players making an honest attempt at a competitive [[Speed Run]] will sometimes donate $20 or $30 to gain a few copies of an item that dramatically improves [[Randomly Drops|item drops]], though at this point there are enough better items out there which occupy the same slot that this strategy is generally considered obsolete.

** You can also sell it at the Mall for several million meat, as well as trade it for custom avatars and titles.

** Prior to "Pioneers of Iria", free players were limited to a single character. With "Iria", they can have a total of 3 characters, one of each race (provided they create a Human character first, and obtain the other two through a simple in-game process). Additional characters are available via buying additional character-slot "cards". While this does not necessarily provide an advantage to game play as such; having additional characters, commonly known as "mules", available for storage is highly beneficial. Especially when working on crafting and other item-intensive "life skills".

** Pets, only available as a premium purchase, are also a extremely useful. Not only do they provide multiple combat support functions, but all pets have some level of storage capacity. Many have other special features such as providing transportation (mounts); easier access to crafting items, which can be difficult or time-consuming to obtain via free sources; and aquisition of random, potentially valuable, items. There are even multiple combat techniques which rely entirely on the use of pets.

* ''Sven Coop'', a mod for ''[[Half Life]]'', allows people to "donate" money to its creators for permanent weapon enhancements—namely, their Uzis do double damage, and they can use armor to boost the damage on their melee weapon.

* A trend in online games such as ''[[Adventure Quest]]'' and ''Race War Kingdoms'' is to have some content that is accessible for free, but then to have power upgrades and additional content accessible only for a price. The Trope: [[Allegedly Free Game]]

* ''[[Tetris]] Online Japan''. You use TP to increase your stats, which affect how many piece previews you can see, how fast pieces move across the field when you hold left or right, the speed of the line clear animation, and so on. The higher the stat, the faster you can play. Of course, this can give quite an advantage. TP is earned by playing and winning games, at 10-34 TP per game depending on performance. It also takes a total of 9,700 TP to max out each stat of the 5 stats. But for 105 yen each, you can buy a "Point Scratch" that gives a random amount from 500-10,000 TP when used. "Premium" version subscribers paying 315 yen a month get another 300 TP per month.

** And it just got even worse. They nerfed the TP gains for non-subscribers to is 1-11 TP per game. Meanwhile, premium subscribers get 1,000 TP a month. The official message explaining this said it was for "balance" purposes. The only balancing going on there is in their checkbooks.

** And now the US version, ''Tetris Friends'', has a similar deal. The "Tuning Style" (i.e. non-cosmetic) upgrades can be bought with Tokens (earned from playing, like TP) or Rubies (bought with cash, or through TrialPay). For an idea of the amount of grind needed, fully upgrading everything requires 210,000 Tokens, when it's rare to see 100 Tokens awarded for a single game. Or you can pay for about 7 bucks worth of Rubies.

* ''[[Combat Arms]]'' has a lot of equipment that can only be bought, or more often, rented, with real money. Earlier in the game's history, the items you could buy were either purely cosmetic or very slightly better than the weapons rentable with game currency. But they are drawing nearer to [[Game Breaker]] status with every new addition as the developers attempt to lure more players into Bribing Their Way To Victory.

* [[Older Than They Think]]: The arcade version of ''[[Double Dragon|Double Dragon 3]]'' featured item shops where you could purchase power-ups literally (i.e. by inserting more credits into the cabinet). Each power-up costs at least one credit each, the same price you would usually pay to continue after a Game Over (depending on the game's settings). The available items include other playable characters that replaces your current fighter after he dies, two extra techniques (a cyclone spin kick and an overhead attack), a max health extension, weapons, and an increase in attack speed. As if that wasn't enough, your backup fighters can only inherit the extra moves from previous characters, since they start off with the default max health and attack speed, and only the Lee brothers (the default fighters) can use weapons. And if all your backup fighters die and you decide to continue, you will lose your extra techniques as well.

** However, if you tried this your score would be divided by the number of credits, so this didn't actually let you do better in the game as far as score was concerned, and could even hurt.

* The 'real time tactics simulation' game ''[[Navy Field]]'' can be played for free. However paying for a 'gold' account gives you double experience points from battles and you can buy special (aka game breaking) ships and weapons using real money. Ironically this doesn't always help as certain groups of free players will specifically target premium ships.

* ''[[Battle Stations]]'' allows the player to buy rare items, which usually require a lot of luck-based exploring or questing to acquire. There are, however, three items for sale which cannot be found via exploration. These items can be traded on the ingame auction, though, so a wealthy character could try and get them there instead.

** Also in the cash shop are Action Point packages, allowing the player to gain more Ap than the regular Ap regeneration provides.

* In ''[[Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia]]'', if you want to get the best helmet in the game, Queen of Hearts, you have to play through Hard Mode with a level cap (Lvl 1 or Lvl 50 are your initial options). If you want to unlock the ability to set the level cap to 255, you have to play though Hard Mode with level cap set at 1... or you can just buy ''[[Castlevania Judgment]]'' for the Wii and sync the two games together to get both rewards.

* ''[http://www.travian.com Travian]'' is this ''[[Up to Eleven]]''.

* The Fury expansion pack for ''[[Wipeout]] HD'' unlocks everything you would normally have to unlock through the Campaign.

* The Ikko-Ikki expansion pack DLC for ''Shogun 2: [[Total War]]'' gives you a free monk hero unit and access to powerful warrior nuns and monk cavalry units right off the bat in multiplayer. They tend to be vastly superior to the light cavalry and ashigaru you have access to at that point, although their in-game purchase price (the monk hero costs as much to add to your army as 4 units of ashigaru bowmen alone) reflect this.

* In [[RuneScape]], you can spend real money to get extra spins on the 'Squeal of Fortune', whose prizes include things like XP, rare items, and in-game money.

* Played with in the iOS port of ''[[Don Pachi|DoDonPachi Blissful Death]]''. Version 1.0.2 added "Custom Edit" options to make the game easier, such as starting with more lives, and most of these can only be unlocked by buying them with real money. But playing with any of these options turned on disqualifies you for the high score rankings. So about the only thing they're good for is letting unskilled players experience the [[True Final Boss]].

 

* In the UK, there is a mathematical competition called the Senior Mathematical Challenge. There are also 2 follow-on rounds, the British Mathematical Olympiad Round 1 and Round 2. You need a certain score in each competition to advance to the next. That is, unless you pay a fee (£16.50 for Round 1, £22 for Round 2). So you can be really good at maths, yet be in the final round with [[Screw the Rules, I Have Money|people who are terrible at math, but paid the fee.]]

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Power At a Price]]

[[Category:Show Business]]

[[Category:Collectible Card Game]]

[[Category:Video Game Items and Inventory]]