I think over time people have lost the meaning of "pay to win". I always understood it as meaning you could purchase something from the shop and have an advantage that nobody else would ever be able to compete with unless they, too, purchased that exact same item. An example of this would be spending $10 on an ability that Kreia used in KOTOR 2. She could use the Force to wield 4 or more lightsabers in the air, without ever physically approaching her opponent(s).

Or you could think of it as spending money to buy a gun that is extremely powerful (say an EE-3 with the same fire power as Boba Fett's), and the only way to obtain that specific version of the EE-3 is through the cash shop. That's what "pay to win" means when I hear it. It has to be something you cannot obtain without spending money, thus putting you on a pedestal and creating a glass ceiling for everyone else.

It does not mean, from my understanding, paying for extra experience boosts, cosmetics, or even auto-unlocks (unlocking all the guns and attachments), as experience can still be earned for free, cosmetics change nothing about the actual game or your standing with other players, and all the guns and attachments can be earned in the game without ever spending real money.

@Barighm: I was agreeing with you, but then you mentioned the book thing. Yes, by all means read a book. But we are well past the era of games lacking the capacity for a genuinely good story.

That said, I do find that the modern generation of gamers expect too much and hype up their own negativity. Sometimes you will find people who get up in arms for the right reasons. Most of the time though... not really. Was this game (seemingly) rushed? Absolutely. Was it complete and utter crap? Absolutely not. Can it be improved? It is being improved.

@Xristophoros: I wish those things hadn't jumped from $20 (circa 2005 era) to the $130+ they are now.

@omnichris: I am honestly beginning to wonder if a lot of the atmosphere and feeling FF used to have is being lost as technology in gaming advances. For the most part, FF7, 8, and 9 seem to have the larger fanbase that remains constant (6 gets an honorable mention too I guess). After that, you have a healthy pool of X fans, but then it drops off (not talking about sales figures so much as the active community and who seems to like what). I think it might also play into Square trying to appeal to a global market more so now than they did in the past.

XV was open world more than anything, and it was a direct response I think to the complaints people had about 13 (the party was wanted dead by pretty much everyone, so they avoided towns and were in a rush to figure out how not to turn into a monster thing or a crystal, so the story necessitated avoiding towns and removing exploration). Problem is I think Nomura and the early team were a little too ambitious with what they wanted XV to be, and then the changing from Versus XIII to XV in addition to the jump from PS3 to PS4/XBone probably didn't help matters either.

Almost makes me wonder if they got to like year 7 or 8 of development, the Execs were growing restless and were disheartened by how much money they had been throwing, so they did an emergency sharing of assets from other projects, such as borrowing KH3's combat system, a modified form of 12/14's questing system, and then created a crap ton of side quests and dungeons and monsters to kill, while at the last minute shoving in what little story was actually developed to create some form of coherent story.

Seems like everything Nomura leads takes forever, then some other guy or team steps in to actually finish it.

What needs to happen, imo, is they use Resident Evil 1 as a blueprint. You bring in Umbrella, the Arklay mansion, STARS, Raccoon City and the characters with some of their quirks that are already created, and you stick to the general plot and ideas already presented, have horror be the theme in the same vein as the classic Alien or the intensity of Aliens, but the actual dialogue and such can be new and fresh. You could even alter the deaths a bit for some surprises.

So you get a genuine horror film with some action and the classic story, but it can modified to fit the big screen with enough freedom to make it work. Would also lead well into Resident Evil 2/3, which already had the "escape from Raccoon City" as the theme.

That said that probably will not happen.

@l_willard: I'm going with the not knowing what they're talking about. All the good journalists left. The site seems to be more about hits than substance anymore.