Gears 5 will include microtransactions, no season pass nor loot boxes

Gears 5
#1

According to a interview Gears 5 will include microtransactions but it is comfirmed that they removed the disgusting Gears packs which, in my opinion and many others, was a huge stain on Gears of War 4.

[Quote] Gears 5 “ahead of the industry” on monetising without loot boxes

Multiplayer design director Ryan Cleven says The Coalition has been working on “player-friendly” purchase systems since Gears of War 4

The developer behind Gears 5 believes the game will set a trend in how AAA games monetise players after launch.

Following a demonstration of the expanded Horde mode at Gamescom today, The Coalition’s Ryan Cleven was asked whether the game would include microtransactions.

The multiplayer design director reiterated that Gears 5 will have no loot boxes, but does have a store in which players can spend real money on in-game currency Iron, which can be used to purchase cosmetics.

There are also two separate systems for gaining content: an unlockable customisation system called Tour of Duty, and then Supply where players get free content just for playing the game. The two content pools are separate.

Meanwhile, heroes will be both earnable and purchasable. There will be no season pass.

Cleven feels that the system is “a very player-centric, player-friendly way of doing customisation and monetisation.”

“We really think we’re ahead of the industry here in getting rid of loot boxes and making sure that we can both service people that are looking to accelerate their progression or earn cosmetics using money but also keeping the integrity of the game experience,” he said.

GamesIndustry.biz asked how much this new monetisation system has been influenced by the ongoing debate surrounding loot boxes and the backlash this mechanic can provoke. But Cleven claims the controversy had no impact on the direction of Gears 5.

Instead, it builds on work begun by Gears of War 4, which introduced similar mechanics where players could both earn and purchase cosmetics. This is something the team has been able to “more fully execute” in Gears 5, since it was a brand new project, but the philosophy was established with the previous title.

“We had made that decision before all that happened,” Cleven said. "We were sort of reading the tea leaves, I guess, and we were one of the earliest to adopt card packs inside our game. We thought we’d done it quite elegantly in Gears 4 – some people liked it, some people didn’t. There were other companies and other games that would have done it differently that people were less happy about.

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This is actually the way microtransactions basically found their way into this industry so I don’t know what this interviewer has been smoking or what TC is on about but hey, it’s better than nothing. At least the loot boxes are gone.

So:

  • No season pass
  • No loot boxes
  • Microtransactions for in-game currency and cosmetics
  • Versus boosters

Let’s hope it’s not even remotely close to TC’s predatory behavior from the past.

#2

Ehhh I didn’t mind the credit system from Gears 4. I’d rather grind for the credits and get free stuff than pay for certain things. Also, I am wondering if we will have any SP DLC this time around since there is no season pass (even though we had the season pass last gears).

#3

I’m not sure how much I’m gonna spend on Gears 5 microtransactions. But it’s the reason why I’ve cancelled the £69.99 pre-order. I’ll just play for nearly free from Game Pass Ultimate. But I’m expecting I’ll spend some amount, even up to £70.00 in total microtransactions, who knows? It’s really about the cost of these microtransactions as well. They have to be reasonable amount. While I do like Arcade and Horde, the purchasable-only hero characters would be something I would buy. But not sure how much it’ll add up in total. No more RNG is great when spending real money, but it might be too trusting and cause lot of spending.

#4

The drop rates were absolutely horrible and I’ve missed so many characters because they were only available for 1 weekend. Not to mention the many duplicates. Only later TC, rightfully, changed it and made it a lot more accessable, either by making them available by crafting or bringing them back. But the loot boxes in the first part of Gears 4’s lifecycle? Horrendous imo. And I’m glad that’s gone.

You are free to disagree though :wink:

4 Likes
#5

I don’t microtransaction,
But they should be obtainable normally by playing. And could use real money for a shortcut to obtaining it.
I can already see the “cool” skins being only buy able with real money and all the ■■■■■■ ones are for the “f2p” plebs(even when its a 60 dollar game).

1 Like
#6

Hey, I did speed runs that lots of people cried about and had a ton of credits that they didn’t have so I didn’t mind the credits. Maybe that’s why they hate SR’s too?

#7

Well we at least get a fair bit of iron, so if there is any cool premium skins you can spend the earned iron

#8

Do you know the pricing or how the system is gonna work?

If they follow and i bet they will any other game with a game pass its a 10-20 dollar skin and if we can only earn iron in the tour of duty and maxing it out then we could get 1-2 skins if we are lucky.

#9

According to Octus, the iron we earn in tour of duty will allow us to get most things in the store at launch.

1 Like
#10

We’ve known this for a while.

I’m concerned about the price of items in the store, but apart from that, it’s a step forward from the Gears 4 pack system.

The less said about the SP for Gears 4 the better.

#11

Far as I can tell, the system isn’t all that revolutionary, but it isn’t exactly terrible either. At least, that’s what we’re being told. It’s pretty much a given that we aren’t going to like certain elements of the system BUT…at least there a) is no season pass that some-crazy-how doesn’t give you access to all of the content and b) is no randomness. Honestly, these were the two biggest complaints I had with GoW4s loot box system in the first place. I was mad that I bought the season pass and still had to pay money to get additional content, and I was mad that if I did pay money (which I never did) that I had no idea what I was getting. That all said, they WANT us to spend money so here’s what we’re going to see:

  1. A prohibitively slow grind to earn currency
  2. The “good” content will only be purchasable with real dollars, or with iron that takes too long to accumulate (see number one)

That said though…I’m mostly fine with it. I have never minded spending a little extra to get things I want, if the price was right and I knew what I was getting.

This system actually mirrors the system Hi-Rez has in Smite. The big difference of course is that Smite is technically free-to-play, though it was $30 (US) to unlock all of the characters, which if you’re going to play for real is a necessity. Anyway…smite has two bits of currency. One is called favor, which you earn for daily log in bonuses and for completing matches. You can earn like 700-800 favor weekly for logging in and I think like 50-100 for completing matches. Been a while since i played so I don’t remember the exact numbers. Anyway, you accrue favor slowly over time and, since it’s free, you can pretty much only buy recolor skins (original skins but with slight color variations, like the diff between regular reina and renegade reina) or a tier 2 skin (out of 5 tiers, tier 2 has very very few differences from the basic skins.) The gems though, that’s what you buy with real money. You can earn 50 a week for free just by logging in (if you log in 7 days in a row), but you can buy bundles for real money, which you then spend on the stuff people actually want. Some of this good content could be purchased directly with gems, but there was plenty that was still randomized loot boxes.

Anyway, maybe you all already knew that, but I actually needed to realize the parallel before the Iron system made sense to me. Tooda-loo.

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#12

They should NOT say that they are ahead of the curve when they still have microtransactions and just because 5 has less then 4 let’s not forget that pop just released and you know addicts will spend way too much money on that. That would be like Disney saying that they’ve lowered prices for Disney world but the built a Disney casino right next door.

#13

We’ve reached the point where microtransactions are viewed as ok because they are less ■■■■■■ than loot boxes.

4 Likes
#14

It’s fascinating to see how quickly things tend to become the new normal. When Gears of War Judgement released Versus boosters were actually frowned upon and now? Nobody bats an eye.

If you’d travel back in time, let’s say 10 years, and told an average gamer the next Gears would have Versus boosters, in-game currency that can be purchased with real life currency and characters than can be bought with money they’d probably laugh at you for making such bizarre statements.

Obviously, it’s slightly different this time around since the industry has changed, development costs have gone through the roof and the game will be on Game Pass day 1, but many games that had these kind of business models in the past tend to be extra grindy so a player has an extra incentive to pay with real money. We’ll see how it works out but I’ll remain sceptical until I experience it myself, partly because of the way TC handled it in the past. Plus they are blatantly talking bs in the interview. Not only did many fans complain and did the whole industry wide discussion about loot boxes definitely have an effect on TC’s decision to exclude them, TC acting like they are setting a new trend and are ahead of the industry is nonsense and just shows how far TC is up their own ■■■■■.

Maybe I’m wrong, and I hope I am, but TC has a lot to proof considering their previous track record. Hopefully it’s actually balanced out and fair to everyone.

Time will tell.

2 Likes
#15

From my perspective there’s a couple of things at play with speedruns. And just to make clear, I was a speedrunner as well (who maxed out the XP rank and got to Wings 10 Level 100).

The first one was that as TC tried to “fix” and prevent speedruns, certain maps changed for Horde, some for the worse (namely Blood Drive) as the enemy spawns were messed up.

Second, yeah I guess there was a certain jealousy from certain players - probably the Versus community, which highlighted the disparity between credit and XP payments between Versus and Horde. I guess part of it was that they were annoyed at “lazy” Horde speedrunners getting rewarded for their style of play.

And lastly, as with just about any online game, people were getting snotty about the lack of skill involved with speedruns. Basically it’s the usual competitive penis-waving jamboree we expect from online video games and their communities (hence the “fake wings” slurs).

On the same topic, it did make the whole process very grindy and repetitive. The RNG system was extremely flawed with wildly varying drop rates and features packs also included two normal launch cards just to dilute the content even more.

As I’ve said in other threads, there is still an element of RNG in GOW5 - the Supply Drops also allow for duplicates (which are autoscrapped for Scrap which is used to crafting), so that clearly indicates they are random. Hopefully it won’t be super ridiculous.

#16

No complaint and I am not a fan of microtransactions or any of that other stuff.

But, I mean, what we are saying is that instead of earning all these cosmetics free like I did with Gears 4 they are probably going to be just like Fortnite and others where you have to pay money for each one and they will be ridiculously high. So instead of literally free just for playing the game players now have to pay. Man I am so glad for that.

#17

You’re glad that you have to pay for cosmetic microtransactions in a 60 dollar game?

1 Like
#18

I think they is being sarcastic. :wink:

At least I hope they is…

#19

At the end of the day they are just cosmetics and dont change how the game plays out. So if they want to charge for somes skins here and there it shouldnt bother people if you are getting what you pay for. People make a big deal out of this.

1 Like
#20

I didn’t mind the Gears 4 credits/packs system. About the only thing you couldn’t earn for free was Run the Jewels and E-sports supporter packs and as an avid horde fan I earned more credts than I ever needed.