Bribing Your Way to Victory: Difference between revisions

 

== 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.

** 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.