So how would you compare this to the COD battle pass? My son loves COD and I have to tell him all the time little man you not getting this battle pass all the time? I told him to work for it in the game but it still would not unlock until I bought it. Is this a different but similar concept? If this is 100% true forget about not buying MT we need to stop buying the games period!
I can kinda tackle this one.
CoD's Battle Pass has both a "free" and "premium" ladder. Some items on the pass you'll get just by playing the game regardless, however most of the items on the Pass will require you to pay actual money in order to get access to them. In its defense, almost everything in the Battle Passes are cosmetic items that have no influence on actual gameplay, and the items that do will have challenges attached to them for players that pick up the game after each season of content.
That being said, the most recent CoD games also have a system where each weapon has a levelling system, and as you gain levels, you unlock attachments for each weapon. Thing is (and speaking in regards to Vanguard, the most recent title), each of the 30+ guns in the game have
60+ levels, some of the most powerful attachments for each weapon tend to be within the last 5-10 levels (many of which make a genuinely
insane difference in performance), and the earn rate of weapon XP (especially in Vanguard) is not only diabolically slow, but also tied to your performance with the weapon. Assuming you're able to earn 1 weapon level for every regular 10-minute match, that means that each gun requires
10+ hours to max out, and you are all-but-required to to get the best weapon combos. This also creates a
massive balancing problem between new/low-free time players with low-level guns, and players who have put massive amounts of time into the game(s), but that's mostly a separate discussion.
Where the Battle Pass (and Blueprint Bundles) come in is that some of the rewards on the Battle Pass (most of which are locked behind the "premium" tier) are weapons that come with attachments already equipped, including some of a weapons stronger options. Mind you, there's not a single attachment that you can't get through regular gameplay, but this system presents the player with a significant choice: they can either slog though the 10+ hours needed to level up a single gun so that it's at least competitive against long-time players, all while being at an objective disadvantage until then,
or they can buy a weapon blueprint bundle (because you can't buy the specific weapon blueprint by itself) with real money and have a gun pre-loaded with strong attachments (or at least something better than the stock weapon) to help alleviate the grind.
Basically, the XP economy (among other aspects) of recent CoD titles are built in a way to incentivize buying the Battle Pass and/or Blueprint MTX bundles to alleviate how much grinding one has to do. From what I've seen/read about GT7's economy so far, it definitely seems like the games economy is very much designed in a way to at least somewhat incentivize buying credits to lessen the grind, since prize cars can't be sold for extra money, online races apparently don't offer credits (or very little, either of which is dumb), and your XP Level is directly tied to your car collection. It also doesn't help that both systems have it to where you can never buy
exactly the amount of currency you want. More often than not, you'll have to overspend on your real money to have enough in-game currency to get the item you want.
Again, "pay-to-lessen-grind" is still just as scummy as Pay-2-Win.
