Jumping back into the micro transactions/F2P thing they are amazing, but also incredibly dangerous. They are amazing because withou them we wouldnt have Planetside 2, Path of Exile, Mechwarrior Online, etc etc etc. those games probably would not exist at all if not for the micro transaction model.
But they are so dangerous because it is so damned tricky what you can offer. You can sell skins, you can sell effects, hell people supporting POE can pay 1k$ to design their own unique item (for everyone to find/use). And you can do stuff that saves the player time, like accelerated leveling (War Thunder does this to good effect.).
But when you go over an often hard to define line and create a play 2 win game, that's when the machine breaks down. And when the machine breaks down games die.
Ed: oh yeah an good lord what is EA thinking with this. I do not understand how they can survive as a company doing stuff like this.
I have absolutely no problem with DLC or microtransactions even in full priced retail games, IF the DLC is not part of the main game and the microtransactions are for frivolous stuff that is not needed to play the game. Dragon Age: Origins had great DLC, as did ME2. It was all either an epilogue, or expansion that is not necessary for playing the main game. ME3, however, took chunks of the game that actually impacts the story and made it DLC (From Ashes). That's just straight up bullshit. Dead Space had a whole bunch of DLC that was extra skins and different weapons, and I was completely fine with it, because I could still play the game without them.
Arkham city is another good example. You didn't need the extra skins for Batman, all the Robin/Nightwing stuff was just Riddler challenges (though, I still wish they would have opened those characters up in the city proper), and Harley's Revenge was an Epilogue. People may bitch about the Catwoman DLC, but it really wasn't DLC, it was re-sale protection. Anyone who bought the game got the Catwoman content for free, and it also wasn't important to the main plot, really.
Also, the only real problem with the microtransactions for ME3 was that they didn't make it clear that your readiness rating wasn't really that important.