It constantly feels like I'm the only one who misses the old days of gaming

And when I say old days I don't mean going back to when Pong was first invented. I'm talking about roughly 10-8 years ago, before the whole "micro-transactions" set in. I remember games that had actual expansions, like Warcraft 3 and the Frozen Throne expansion, or even games that had simple DLC add-ons, like Dragon Age: Origins that had small add-ons plus a full expansion to the story. Hell, simple map expansions for multiplayer games like Halo I also found acceptable since they game us something new and adding to the game that we really didn't need to spend more money on.

Then companies apparently found out that they could milk more money from players if they put certain things in the game to force players to give them more, like Mass Effect 3's multiplayer in getting new characters or weapons or some of the recent Call of Duty's and their supply drops. And these 'loot crates' just seem to have infested the entire gaming industry now or are beginning to everywhere.

Now sometimes if a company has a free-to-play game, Riot being the prime example, it feels a bit more reasonable to allow it since it's how they make their income (outside of Esports and other merchandise). But when you put this stuff in a game that you already paid for, it comes off as a turn off, at least to me.

The only exception I find of loot crates in a game I paid for is Overwatch, which we will leave out about whether it's good or bad because that's not the fucking topic here, because when you really get down to it you're not being felt forced to buy them. You can earn them easily through the arcade or leveling up, though it will take longer to do so. But even then the only thing of interest is cosmetics for the heroes in skins, voice lines, poses and highlights, along with player icons and sprays. Again, these are purely cosmetic items and don't affect gameplay balance, unlike say CoD again or Halo 5.

But honestly that all gets thrown out the fucking window when you find out that micro-transactions are seeping through **to fucking single player games! ** Deus Ex: Mankind Divided was the first to show this and I hoped that the outcry of players against this would stop it before it spread, but no now we have it in Shadow of War, a game that just got released and was hyped for until I heard about it's market place. Why? This could have easily still been a single player game with separate DLC to add on like in the original. I want to believe the game is good, but so help me I'm not buying the game if companies are just going to start adding micro-transactions!

My final thoughts on the matter is, overall, I'm getting fucking sick of this deal we have going. Battlefront 2 is adding them with pointless items to collect, Shadow of War became "pay for ultimate orc follower than earn him fair in-game", and honestly I'm feeling similar to Riot and their emotes right now. I know their are games out there that will still be the same, like Wolfenstein, but so help me, no actually so help us, I'm not going to be wanting to pay an extra $9.99 to start a new playthrough in a single player game if we continue letting companies get greedy with this shit!