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Mabinogi.
Not many people have played it I'm sure, but imagine this:
You've just downloaded a new free MMO. You figure it's gonna be super pay to win, but it's free so why not give it a shot anyway.
For the first few minutes, after you stop being confused by the UI, you start to take everything in. There are no classes, you can do whatever you want. Want to be a mage AND a warrior? Totally doable. Want to be a bard playing in the town square for tips? Thanks to the robust music system, you can. In fact, you're having trouble finding anything you can't do.
A few months later, things are progressing nicely. You've mastered every skill, played thousands of songs by now, got some pretty good gear, and you haven't encountered even a hint of the p2w you expected. Life is great. However, you're going to need a bit of a gear upgrade before tackling this next dungeon. You check how much it'll cost you. 300 million.
You've never even seen more than 50 million in one place before. Nevertheless, you figure with hard work, you can achieve it. After a month, you've gathered about 100 mil by exploiting market bubbles to sell anything valuable as fast as possible and in as large of quantities as possible. It's still not enough though. The cash shop begins to beckon you. You could pay a little real money to buy a cash shop item, and sell it for gold.
But you realize that in order to get the 200 mil you need, you'd need to spend over 100 dollars. You rationalize to yourself that hey, the p2w isn't that bad if it's easier to make the gold in game than it is to make the real money to buy it. You continue on your quest, but you run into an issue. There just aren't any more bubbles to exploit. You've crashed the market in your quest to obtain all the gold you need without spending a penny. You cave, and buy just a couple cash shop items to sell and make up the difference. You get your shiny new equipment. You feel powerful. It's such a huge upgrade it's almost ridiculous. You feel like 20$ was worth it to have this much fun. Out of curiosity, you check to see how much your next upgrade will cost.2 billion. It's too late. You're addicted. Sunk cost fallacy has kicked in. You've already invested in your character, and that next upgrade is gonna cost you 2000$.
You can't quit. You've tried. There's just no game like this anywhere else. You will spend that money eventually, no matter how hard you try to avoid it.This is my story. I'm aiming to get that gold without spending a penny. It's been months. I'm half a percent if the way there. It's not gonna happen. Every day I have to pull myself away from that cash shop. It would be so easy, but so irresponsible.
But one day I will spend that money. The game is insidious like that. The only way to avoid it is to either not play the game in the first place or not give a shit about progressing. I am in neither camp.Genuinely, I love the game, but every day I pray it gets shut down before I have the chance to pay in that much money. It's so hard to stop myself.
Dude. Uninstall it, walk away, get a hobby with that $2000. Something you always wanted to do that's on your bucket list. There's no way playing a P2W game was on your bucket list.
Buy a guitar, take some lessons. That would be way more fulfilling than playing something in a virtual town square for imaginary tips.
Or.. you know.. spend the 2k on the hobby you already have. Fuck it. Might as well dig a deeper hole.
Yes, Like Mabinogi
I know you're joking, or at least half joking, but I literally am getting help for this. I have psychiatric appointments constantly to deal with how easily I get addicted to things and occasionally try meds to try to improve my impulse control.
I haven't quit the game because my psychiatrist and the few therapists I've gone through feel the game's actually been a net positive on my life, and the real problem is my impulse control. If I wasn't drooling over a 2000$ staff I'd be buying 2000$ worth of 40k minis that I'll never actually get around to putting together and painting. That actually already happened a little bit during a brief period where I quit the game, and I did indeed buy a bunch of 40k shit I still haven't assembled.
Have you been diagnosed with ADHD?
I am diagnosed with ADHD, but more pressingly I'm diagnosed with Schizoaffective disorder. The manic phases from that make me try to empty my bank account at the slightest provocation, even after being medicated rather well for it.
The ADHD sure doesn't help though, causing me to still be impulsive even when not in a manic phase, just less so. It's also possible my impulse control in my manic phases is only as bad as it is because it's combined with ADHD.
I don't know about the other stuff, but my understanding is that people with ADHD have hard time avoiding addictions as is.
You rolled challenging traits in character creation, but remember that all negative perks give more experience. Keep it up. Godspeed.
I'm relived to hear that you actually got the help you deserved because I was serious. I know how awful it feels to not be in control of yourself or your motivations and I don't want anyone to experience it
It's a serious issue how many games now are deliberately designed with compulsion conditioning tactics to get people playing and spending not out of legitimate interest but out of a manufactured "need".
I heard stories of people who had to drop their favorite franchises, like sports ones, because they started to resort to that, and they knew they'd be too susceptible to keep playing without giving in.
You are addicted, try drugs instead.
I mean you already show impulse control. Just keep that energy up. If you one day cave in try again to not spend more money for as long as you manage.
I am collecting anime figurines.
Send help
I've been trying to redirect the energy to things that don't require paying in. Joined a bard guild. Barding requires zero investment. Technically you could buy some basic equipment to make your buffs like, 2% more effective, but that's way less appealing.
Instead of being a battle bard, I'm just writing music for the game (or rather converting and remixing existing music to be playable in game,) which is both fun and comes with zero cost. Even met a dude who is now my boyfriend who is a pretty famous composer in the game and wants to host a concert featuring both of our music.So things are looking up, so long as I can continue to convince myself that I really do not need to drain my bank account for a fake staff to have fun. Certainly come a long way from when I tried to convince a dude who was into me to buy me thousands of dollars worth of gear and he almost actually did. That was probably one of my lower moments... Glad he refused in the end at least.
How would it feel to just uninstall?
2 billion. It’s too late. You’re addicted. Sunk cost fallacy has kicked in.
I think the Sunk cost kicked in by the time you chose to spend money to get those 200 mil, since you were "already a third of the way" and "worked so hard already"
The money I spent was actually just 20$ to cover the last 20 mil since I was that much short and crashed the market for the 3rd time, so I figured 20$ wasn't a lot to speed things up a bit.
Turns out I was wrong, because that triggered my brain to go "Well, I already paid money into the game. If I stop now, what was the point of that?"
Previously I had the awful feeling of disapproval from my exwife who wanted me to save that money for more worthwhile things keeping me in line, but we split up, so now I have to control myself on my own, and it turns out I'm really bad at that.
Sounds like you're playing a more generous version of capitalism.
This has to be a copypasta.
This has to be a 15 year old kid.
Not sure if you mean me, but if you do, I'm 26, but I have multiple psychological disabilities that cause me to have extremely poor impulse control, especially regarding money. The game is intended to exploit people like me, or rather I should say its monetization is.
Ironically, this 2000$ weapon in the game doesn't even exist in the original Korean version of the game (nor does the 300$ one I spent way too much time obtaining.) Instead, the tier of equipment you upgrade to in that version you're intended to craft yourself, not buy. They added these ridiculously expensive items in many localizations of the game because they thought the game wouldn't be profitable without it.
Evidently I'm not alone on the impulsive spending thing in this game though, given how if you pick any player who's been around for more than a few months and ask them how much they've spent, 600$ is on the lower end of what you'll hear. It's a super common running joke that everyone who quits due to the p2w will be back in a couple weeks to spend a couple thousand more dollars.
My one solace is that if I ever decided to sell my account, it's worth way more than I paid.
I've played a different one and resisted spending cash. One day I felt depression getting worse over my addiction to that game and had given all of my accounts to other players and uninstalled everything. It felt kinda bad for a week or two but then got better. I'd say you still can win that
Oh. It's that game that has a song in DJMax Respect V. Who knew that such a cute looking game could be hiding something so insidious.