Armoury; Commander Micro-transactions.

But, I stated that you have all the rights to say what Art is for you. I just tried to express what Art is for me.

Everything is pretty much subjective. Apart that if you bring your Custom Commander into the average Art Gallery trying to convince them that's Art, they're gonna have a hard time in deciding if giving you credit for that or not. Likely they will not.

As for the "slim" in your quote, my work intersect Art since 20 years or more and yes, I studied Art for longer than I actually wanted. And as programming, I had the priviledge to start coding when I was 12 (29 years ago), and I've never stop doing it.

Those facts do not make me an Artist neither a programmer (I defined myself as a designer). But it allows me to understand a bit of both world.

But hej, I do not want to disrespect anyone's opinion. Everything is pretty much subjective on this topic as we've seen (once again) and what I exposed above merely represents my personal point of view on the matter.

I simply tried to back it up with some data, since you asked me to

DotA has paid aesthetic items because it's completely free to play - you don't buy the game itself.
The first few items in DotA are free... Those are the base skins.
Even then you can unlock by pot luck by playing a tonne, or by purchasing cheaply on the Steam Market.

I resent having to both buy a game at high-street prices, and then purchase more features in-game to unlock them.
Expansions and DLC are different because they are (supposedly) developed post-release and therefore not included in the 1.0 RRP.

I should clarify. I have nothing against micro-transactions as a business practice - if a game is Free-to-Play from the beginning or if those micro-transactions are aesthetics which are developed post release.
I do not agree DLC and microtransactions are the same thing. We need only look as far as Farmville Vs. the Total War DLC to see the distinction.

However still I feel the best way for aesthetics to be unlocked is as a reward for playing, or as a bonus for purchasing expansions. That way you keep the community going, and people get to show off how much PA they have played within the community, in-game.
Warcraft and Starcraft do similar things with Player Portraits - PA could do this in a more in-game and idiosyncratic way with unlocking Commanders as you rank up

If Uber wanted to cash in, they could perhaps combine both worlds and have players purchasing unlocks for Commanders they 'earn' through in-game achievements.

I know this isn't really the most loved of games but... I'm sure one of the Call of Duty's released DLC with only one skin, though it went on all of your weapons, for something like 80 Microsoft points (The equivalent of one dollar) yet they sold like wildfire- I'm sure a lot of people really wouldn't mind paying 1 - 5 dollars on some sweet looking Commander, as long as there's no Commander that is the most Uber being of them all (which has been confirmed will not happen) I'm fine with and I'm sure the vast majority of players would as well... I understand that you don't want to pay extra for a commander, and that's fine, but maybe some people- like myself- would be willing to. Why can't we have next to all of these suggestions, combined, Commanders rewarded from achievements, Commanders given out every once in a while with free updates, and even some being sold in the store for a cheap price?

I frankly have no issues with this model for selling additional content via the Uber marketplace in-game. Same goes for mods, if so their creators will decide (I may even buy some more Commanders myself).

But it needs to be additional and not to impact on the game-play (excluding mods or DLC that setup an entirely different game-play of course - like an eventual Dune theme, for example).

Nothing promised on Kickstarter has to be sold aside. I think that we all agree that those stuffs needs to be included in PA at some point, for that we paid already them.

And this more or less has been confirmed by Uber so what's all the discussion about?

The important part to remember here is that you did disrespect other peoples' opinions, experience and skills. You did. Unequivocally.

Calling all of this your opinion doesn't change that. The fact that everybody's posts are their own opinions does not mean you can say "you're not an artist", or "the art community wouldn't call you an artist". It's rude, it devalues conversation and it makes the argument about credentials (which is an appeal to authority or some other logical fallacy).

That's what I took issue with

You can unlock completely useless items by playing the tutorial, that's true. Everything else you rely on playing the game to unlock (to the tune of one item per every 2 or three games . . . that's one item slot - or consumable - per 90 minutes of game time or more, assuming 30 minute game averages. DotA games actually last a bit longer than that on average, due to the pacing of the game).

I know a heckuva lot about these MOBA games. HoN and DotA 2 specifically, it's been a few years since I had any interest at all in LoL. I'd rather not debate them ad infinitum, we'd literally (not even figuratively ) be here all day.

Expansions, DLC and micro-transaction based content are (generally) developed post-release (or, to be more accurate, they're produced after the main game content has been shipped for certification prior to going gold).

A micro-transaction is a form of DLC. In this digital age, even expansions are DLC, as you don't necessarily buy it in a box anymore (the last expansion I bought in a physical box was DoW II: Chaos Rising, and that had to be installed through Steam anyhow). DLC stands for Downloadable Content. There is no distinction in the size, scope and cost of that content. It is all downloadable content. What seems to make a difference is public perception.

Remember, I'm not arguing about PA. I'm not debating the multitude of ways Uber could implement additional Commanders into the game. I'm arguing against this misinformed mindset that micro-transactions are bad, and DLC is good (or acceptable). A few years back DLC was bad. In some communities DLC is still perceived as bad.

MCs (sorry, getting a pain to type out the phrase a lot ) are DLC. They're just smaller in size and more flexible in scope. If you're familiar with project management, there's still an overhead in smaller projects (larger projects have, comparatively, less overhead, which makes them more efficient in that regard) but you can be more flexible with deadlines and shipping dates. If you miss an update deadline, you can fold it into the next milestone with less effort than a large DLC would cost (for reference, Google what's changing with regards to EVE, the space MMO sim spreadsheet thing, and its development schedule).

The problem is that MCs have a bad name because they're frequently done wrong. As were DLC (and still are), once upon a time. Heck, even expansions, way back in the day, were received poorly because it looked like a way to get out of building an entirely new game (and to some extent, the criticism was right, as there have been some expansions which are notably worse and more of a cash-in than others).

I don't have a major issue with Commanders being sold in the way you suggest - heck I've spent enough money in the DotA store to agree this is a functional model to bring in money and cover design/production costs. Just so long as its post-release and we aren't just paying to unlock everything... And augmented with unlockable/ranked rewards so that people can also show off how much they love to play PA in PA, not only how much money they're willing to spend on PA in PA.