Bribing Your Way to Victory: Difference between revisions

* 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.

** Dialed up with the release of 4.0, where they added a huge array of dark-matter items including resource boosters, flat research and build time reducers, the ability to sell ships and defenses back to the game for up to 75% of their base resource cost, and the ability to pay large amounts of dark matter to instantly halve the time of research and production queues; paying this twice instantly completes it, which is a big deal to high-ranking players as research times can become months long. Someone willing to sink massive amounts of cash into the game can now get +40% to the production of every mine they own and instantly complete research projects and build queues. This led to a fairly infamous incident where one player in Universe 35 gained almost ''30 million research points'' the day after 4.0 was published by recycling one of his fleets and pouring the resources into research, which he completed with dark matter. To put that in perspective, the previous #1 researcher only had 16.6 million points in research, and a rank 200 of 5000 account averages about 30 million points ''total''.

** Partially subverted, since it's possible to get the dark-matter items of version 4.0 (''not'' officers or commander) paying with in-game resources. However, this has the limits of just one per day and the item you get is randomly selected (paying dark matter, however, allows you to try up to two new rolls). Also, dark matter as well as a merchant can be obtained sending ships in expedition missions. However, you get small quantities of the former, and both appear at random (and that's not very usual).

*** How bad can it get with ''FarmVille''? [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/08/farmville-debt-kid-racks-_n_529947.html Read and weep.]

** This is increasingly common in Facebook games. The game ''[[Superhero City]]'' offers Merit points which can buy instant recharges to complete tasks, the ability to fight again immediately, loads of in game cash, and at least a few items and powers that can only be bought this way. None of it is necessary, but particularly the exclusive items and powers give you an edge on characters that don't have them. Merit points can be earned by recruiting and completing online surveys but the sheer volume of such activities you must do to get enough Merit Points is a bit prohibitive.

* [[Trinity Universe (video game)|Trinity Universe]] is a odd one: while it is a standard console jRPG, the player can buy item packs for real money. Those packs consist of skills, weapons, armor, accessories and stat raising items that either aren't obtainable normally or are available only at the end of the game and even then take ludicrous amounts of time to obtain since the materials for the necessary [[Item Crafting]] recipes are exceedingly rare. Being available from the start of the game also brings them to effectively [[Game Breaker]] ranks.

* All of the ''[[Disgaea]]'' games have an in-universe variant and [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshade]] it. You can bribe members of the dark assembly with items in your bag to rule in your favor making bill passing easier. Of course if that doesn't work you can just force them through battle.

* ''[[Dofus]]'' is an allegedly free game, allowing you access to a limited area and one dungeon of the game without paying (Though you can wander around much of the world, you just can't do much outside of certain areas). Subscriptions, however, also come with prizes. The most interesting of these include special pets (Pets are essentially another piece of equipment) that function differently than normal pets, and are slightly better than regularly accesible pets, and two pieces of equipment that allow you to hide what equipment you are wearing (Useful for [[PvP]], as your opponent doesn't know what to expect). The longer subscription you buy, the better your reward, and there is nothing preventing you from buying two year long subscriptions at once to get two pets or equipment modifiers. However, the game does include a 3 month waiting period on trading these rewards. Combined with the free to play 'version' being little more than a trial account, most people are subscribed and thus most people have at least the two popular subscription pets, and it rarely presents a huge problem.

* ''[[Busou Shinki]]: Battle Rondo'' is already a competitive online game based around a toy line, so naturally, the more figures from the line you have, the better your selection of characters and equipment is. '''However''', Konami decided to be even more greedy about it and use an online cash shop to deal in extremely powerful weapons and equipment ''that cannot be obtained in any other way''. Combine this with the average ([[No Export for You|Japanese]]) player's [[Elite Tweak]] mentality, and it means only someone who knows EXACTLY what they're doing can use figure-only stuff to win.

* The Mighty Eagle in ''[[Angry Birds]]''. Send in the eagle to kill every pig instantly! Fortunately, there is a one hour cool down to moderate use.

* ''Luna Online'' follows this trope. The game world is pretty big, making walking ''painfully'' slow, but hey! You can buy a time-limited warp scroll at the cash shop! Grinding going a little slowly? Just buy an experience multiplier scroll! Granted, it's completely possible to reach the max level without buying any gPotatoes (the currency you buy with real cash). In fact, a character in June 2010 was featured on the game's website for having done just that (although they did trade in-game gold for the gPs and special items).

* ''[[Point Blank (2008 video game)|Point Blank]]'' - [[Similarly Named Works|Not to be confused]] with [[Point Blank (video game)|the Namco game]], but this Korean MMOFPS is [[Germans Love David Hasselhoff|very successful in Indonesia]]. And you either need in-game point grinding (since the point reward often painfully small) to buy [[Cool Guns]], or rent (yes, it limited from 3 to 30 days of "purchase") with real cash for instant (or even more) [[Cool Guns]].

* ''[[S4 League]]'' is completely free to play... but, those who are willing to shell out real money get slightly more effective weapons, flashier clothes, and will gain levels faster. They also don't have to worry about buying their weapons with in-game currency which is fairly difficult to acquire. On the other hand, the advantage supplied by the paid-for weapons is fairly minimal, and none of them are unique; they're just optionally reskinned versions of the stuff everyone gets. Likewise, the paid-for clothes just look good, they don't offer any concrete tactical advantages.

* ''[[Battlestar Galactica Online]]'': Many high-end items, including big starships and all the way to literal experience-buying, need cubits for purchase. You can spend days grinding for the things by doing assignments and hoping the [[Random Number God]] gives you the right drops... or you can just fork up the real-world cash.

* ''[[Star Trek Online]]'' generally averts this when it comes to starships—while non-endgame C-Store ships are definitely upgrades over ships of that level, the player will inevitably outlevel them, though with luck and skill one can take them further than that. Moreover, all C-Store ship purchases become account-wide unlocks for any character of that faction at that level which (along with any exclusive equipment) may be claimed as many times as the player wants, ''and'' said equipment may be carried over onto any other ship that is qualified to use that equipment. Finally, the endgame C-Store ships are mostly sidegrades that have at least one disadvantage compared to the free endgame ships and only mild advantages... though anyone going up against an Odyssey or a Bortasqu' may disagree.

* 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]].

* Also from [[CAVE]], Smartphone Mode in ''[[Death Smiles]]'' has powerful [[Downloadable Content|DLC]] equipment, although unlike most other games, the DLC is at best a [[Disc One Nuke]], none of the items are consumable (and they can all be restored if you lose your save data), and the best equipment in the game can't be bought. The exception is the Lucky Charm, which plays this trope painfully straight - it's the single most expensive DLC item in the game at $4<ref>Formerly ''$6'' when first released, and occasionally lowered to 99 cents during sales, although these only happen about twice a year.</ref> and ''triples'' the item drop rate when equipped.