Turn 10 Confirms Microtransaction Plans for Forza 7

[MXH]

Maybe, but I imagine implementing microtransactions is a relatively low-cost affair, and there's no shortage of people who just cannot handle their money even if their life depended on it... so I'd think it would still be a profitable venture even if the game balance wasn't compromised.

That being said, Forza 7 does seem to being laying the groundwork for things to get worse in the future.

I'd imagine that being the case. Still, to me, it just all seems pointless if you have a fairly generous in-game economy and MTs at the same time. I don't have the statistics, but maybe it's worth doing in hope of to bank on the few that do fall for it, regardless of whatever backlash that might follow.

 

[Lain]

Time to "unwatch thread" this hysteria over nothing is ridiculous.

There's no hysteria, I'm just calling microtransactions out for what they are: greed-fueled rubbish. It's sad that I even have to argue the point.

You are right though, it is "over nothing"... because that's exactly what you get by buying 'em. You get fake money with fake value for fake progress that they literally could've given to you for free, because it wouldn't cost them anything to throw in some simple cheat codes or a credit multiplier option to tailor the game's progression rate to your own liking.

 

[eran0004]

Surely, but you're going to end up hampering the natural progression more or less anyway once you introduce microtransactions into your game. I mean, there has to be an incentive for players to spend real money, otherwise it's merely a waste of time and effort from the developer's side. They might have as well skipped it altogether then.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

That is based on the assumption that these microtransactions in Forza is primarily a business model, instead of an option to skip the career progression.

For those who like the career it's pointless, but for those who want instant access to some specific cars it's not.

 

[Lain]

That is based on the assumption that these microtransactions in Forza is primarily a business model, instead of an option to skip the career progression.

For those who like the career it's pointless, but for those who want instant access to some specific cars it's not.

It’s still taking advantage of those people who want immediate access to specific cars. Why do they need to pay for the privilege? Why not implement some simple cheat codes instead?

Oh right because money’s on the table, aka greed.

 

[The Chosen One]

Why even is the F2P mentality in place for a 60-dollar AAA game?

"Let's make the grind to get what the player wants inconvenient so that they pay us money to get what they want faster."

When I buy a game for that price, at least for me, I expect to have some accessible fun, not a frustrating and unchallenging grind to repeat for hours.

 

[eran0004]

It’s still taking advantage of those people who want immediate access to specific cars. Why do they need to pay for the privilege? Why not implement some simple cheat codes instead?

Oh right because money’s on the table, aka greed.

Because money for nothing would crash the auction house and render the game economy useless.

 

[Lain]

Because money for nothing would crash the auction house and render the game economy useless.

I’ll admit that’s an interesting defense that I hadn’t thought of, but it wouldn’t be hard to keep people’s cheated wealth quarantined to their local device.

 

[Famine]

I listened to that Jim guy, whoever he is, all the way through. While he sounds like an angry eunuch knock-off of Zero Punctuation, and a lot of his comments sounded like bile for the sake of bile, he did make one interesting point. However, I'm unfamiliar with previous Forza games, so I don't know how accurate it is.


The comment was that in previous Forza games, you could set your own challenges by making the cars harder - or rather less assisted - to drive, and get bonus payouts for them. Turn an aid off and the game would reward you more. Turn more off and you'd get further rewards.

He contends that this is no longer automatic in FM7, and is only available as part of Mod Card challenges. Play your No ABS (I don't know if that's a thing) Mod Card and you'd get the bonus on the card for winning a race without ABS - and the cards are consumable.

The Mod Cards, he says, are only available through Prize Crates, which you have to spend credits on. So it's his contention that rather than making credits by doing something, you now have to earn enough credits to possibly win a card in order to do something to make credits. It's a very circular path that is - as he rightly points out - is a part of many Free to Play games. The functions have no actual connection to the game play, rather they exist only to feed the game's economy. It's the Broken Window Paradox - they cost money to buy and you make money from buying them - only it has been applied to something that was previously part of the game.

Of course, having an unlimited 100% bonus from the VIP pack would make the lower-tier Prize Crates that offer these Mod Cards almost meaningless to VIP players. So it's not an unreasonable conclusion that the VIP Mod Cards have been made consumable in order to sell the Prize Crate economy to everyone - but it would be very cynical to assume that this was left deliberately vague in the VIP benefit description.


The microtransaction thing is almost a separate issue, but connected. Again I'll plead ignorance of the Token system here too (I don't know how Tokens and credits interact, if at all), but if you're able to buy Tokens with real money and exchange them for credits to buy Prize Crates - or if Tokens can be directly used to buy Prize Crates - you're basically looking at people paying to bypass the grind they need to afford Prize Crates that give them bonuses to help them with the grind. Although I imagine that it's more likely people who use the microtransactions in this manner (if it's possible to - again, I don't know how Tokens work in Forza) will spend the money on higher-tier Prize Crates that offer cars to drive rather than Mod Cards to help the grind they're avoiding.


All that aside, Jim is absolutely awful to listen to and that's an eleven minute assault on my ears that did not enrich my life sufficiently to make up for the trauma of enduring it.

 

[Lain]

Holy wall-o-text, Admin!

I’ll have to disagree with you on the “Jim being awful to listen to” bit, I think he’s hilarious... but humor is subjective, so fair enough.

But yes, in previous Forza games, adjusting assists/difficulty settings would give you a fixed % boost to your earnings... turning off the driving line might give you a 5% boost for instance, and cranking up the AI difficulty to max might give you another 20% (I don't know if those numbers are accurate, but you get the idea). Even Forza 6 still had this, despite introducing the mod cards. Admittedly it did make the mod cards feel redundant, but I certainly didn't mind getting redundant boosts to my earnings... plus it was nice to always have that baseline non-modcard boost due to the limitations on how many mods you could use per race and the fact that most mods are limited use items (now all of them are in FM7).

And Tokens in prior Forza games worked by you exchanging a set number of tokens in exchange for the vehicle... you don't convert them to credits or anything like that, basically each vehicle had a price in credits and a separate token price (iirc it's usually somewhere between 1-3 depending on vehicle tier, but I could be wrong). How they'll work in Forza 7 is anybody's guess... anybody thinking they'll work exactly like they have in past Forza games is just as guilty of assumption as Jim is for assuming that you'll be able to buy lootboxes with them. I personally wouldn't be the least bit surprised if you could only buy lootboxes with them this time around, and buying vehicles directly with them was a thing of the past.

 

[sems4arsenal]

@Famine That's Jim alright. His online persona is ...... something.

Honestly can't believe people are defending this though.

 

[The Chosen One]

I'm just waiting for a Forza 7 review video from that one player who made an hour-long review of Forza 6 in which that game was broken down and critiqued almost in its entirety.

 

[Symtex]

Here's are my statistic with Forza 7. I've played over 18 hours. I own 121 cars in my collections. These were all acquire through leveling bonuses or bought so I can do a specific race. I won more than 3 millions credits. They are giving away this stuff like it's candy. Don't believe the BS about the micro-transaction inducing concept. none of it is remotely true. This just article/video to drive traffic and ads revenue.

 

[Lain]

Here's are my statistic with Forza 7. I've played over 18 hours. I own 121 cars in my collections. These were all acquire through leveling bonuses or bought so I can do a specific race. I won more than 3 millions credits. They are giving away this stuff like it's candy. Don't believe the BS about the micro-transaction inducing concept. none of it is remotely true. This just article/video to drive traffic and ads revenue.

Thanks for the insight. We definitely didn’t already know the balance in FM7 was generous...

 

[BuckFly]

Best farming of XP and credits whatsoever: (you need a VIP DLC car)


General farming tips while playing career :
https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/threads/this-game-is-making-me-a-worse-driver.360083/#post-11964214

If you are low on cars or credits I highly suggest following the second method from the video link as no doubt Turn 10 will hot-fix that soon, it's utterly destroying their micro-transitions model. I'm following that now and I'm now over level 190 with car collector tier 23 or something (and probably over half of all the tier 3 & 4 cars in my garage). Got my router towards the XBox One turned off so in case they hotfix it tomorrow I'll grind some more offline. Not planning to play to play this game as much as I did with FM6 but still want to get that garage filled.

Thanks, brey.

If memory serves me this is not the first time I've thanked you for being a good guy and a good forum member!

👍

 

[ImaRobot]

@Famine That's Jim alright. His online persona is ...... something.

Honestly can't believe people are defending this though.

I see less people defending the microtransactions, and more people defending the fact that the game isn't geared around it.

The comment was that in previous Forza games, you could set your own challenges by making the cars harder - or rather less assisted - to drive, and get bonus payouts for them. Turn an aid off and the game would reward you more. Turn more off and you'd get further rewards.

He contends that this is no longer automatic in FM7, and is only available as part of Mod Card challenges. Play your No ABS (I don't know if that's a thing) Mod Card and you'd get the bonus on the card for winning a race without ABS - and the cards are consumable.

That's correct this time around. Before, each assist you disabled would give you a 5-10% increase. I think by the time I removed all aids, but left driving line on braking only and rewind on, I was sitting somewhere at around a 60% credit boost. However, what people are failing to realize is that the Drivitar difficulty now gives you a much greater bonus. With my Drivitars currently sitting at unbeatable, I'm now getting a 100% credit bonus with the same assists removed.

I'll separate this, because it has to be said again as a lot of people are complaining about the lack of payouts with assists. Drivitar difficulty, if set to unbeatable, will net you a 100% increase in credits.

Again I'll plead ignorance of the Token system here too (I don't know how Tokens and credits interact, if at all), but if you're able to buy Tokens with real money and exchange them for credits to buy Prize Crates - or if Tokens can be directly used to buy Prize Crates - you're basically looking at people paying to bypass the grind they need to afford Prize Crates that give them bonuses to help them with the grind

In the past Tokens worked alongside credits as usable currency, but only specifically for vehicles. It hasn't branched out farther than that. However, I fear that they might be used for Prize Crates this time around, as there's just too many vehicles locked behind the random mechanic that it just seems the most likely.

As it sits, you'd probably be better just playing the game naturally and not chance the 300k on something that might not give you anything worthwhile. I'm earning somewhere between 60-90k credits per race with the "Long" setting for the laps, which is about 20 minutes worth of driving give or take, so if I buy one of them I'm basically out of an hour+ of racing. The pro doesn't outweigh the con for me, in this case. I'll eventually start buying them only when I have a significant amount of credits, and nothing else to waste them on, most likely.

 

[Lain]

I'll separate this, because it has to be said again as a lot of people are complaining about the lack of payouts with assists. Drivitar difficulty, if set to unbeatable, will net you a 100% increase in credits.

That's cool, but AI was one of the few difficulty settings I'd set to the lowest... #playerchoice

 

[Symtex]

That's cool, but AI was one of the few difficulty settings I'd set to the lowest... #playerchoice

Set your career length to long. You don't have to smash your way through T1. I had some very enjoyable races that way Pro Level. 10-12 laps races. Plenty of time to race properly.

 

[ImaRobot]

That's cool, but AI was one of the few difficulty settings I'd set to the lowest... #playerchoice

Why's that, if you don't mind me asking? Even if you don't use the max drivatar difficulty, you'd still be getting a bigger, if not, just as big credit bonus if you had removed so many assists on the last game.

 

[Lain]

I guess I just don't like the AI to put up much of a fight.... I'm more interested in the challenge of driving cleanly, so I'm fine with completely disabling the racing line, rewind, enabling full damage, etc. Basically the AI is the lowest priority for me, so if cranking it up makes thing too difficult, it's the first thing I cut.

 

[SlipZtrEm]

I should probably start by saying that I'm absolutely against monetizing gambling in games — for obvious reasons.

But, I think this has been partially blown out of proportion (and yes, I realize that it was my article ). A good chunk of it is from people who aren't familiar with the game — by choice or otherwise — jumping in with the "OMG MICROTRANSACTIONS" rants. These are people with no real experience with how the previous games' economies have worked, but see "prize crate", "future MTs", and immediately put them together as a sure thing.

Microtransactions have been in racing games for years now. Forzas have had them at least since the beginning of this generation. GT6 had them too. Oddly enough, one catches a lot more flak for it than the other — and it's the one with the stingier in-game economy. Which is bizarre.

I've no problem with MTs — time, after all, is money. If people want to spend real life money to unlock cars instead of grinding, fine. That's their choice — and, at least in the racing games I've played with MTs, it's always been pretty easy to avoid them (you can turn them off completely in FM6).

Cheat codes aren't really an alternative: take into consideration the proliferation of online racing. Or, in Forza's case, the auction house. A game like GTAV has very distinct offline/online careers: Turn 10 would have to completely re-engineer the game if it wanted to let players enter in some button presses to have any car they wanted.

What I can't stress enough is that we still need to know a few things about the system:

• The mechanics of the loot crates: Can we receive a car we already own in them? If the loot crates can't duplicate cars in our collection, then the 100-ish cars that can only be won by crates, Forzathon, and the Specialty Dealer will all simply be end-of-game unlocks, once you've amassed the rest of your collection. Ideal? No. But it's a far cry from "pay to win".
• Will Tokens even be available for loot crates? This is the big one. In FH3, tokens only worked with buying cars themselves. Not wheelspins. If FM7's tokens are only in there for players to unlock cars, then it's not really any different from what's come before. I'll admit, it does seem likely the loot crates will be token-purchasable as well, but maybe this whole controversy will change T10's mind. It happened with FM5.

About assists and the credit bonuses they used to provide: I touch on this in our review (which is coming within the hour), but I see it two ways:

• Glass Half-Empty: T10 has stripped that feature to offer credit bonuses only with AI difficulty, in an attempt to push people towards crates.
• Glass Half-Full: AC and PCARS2 offer "authentic" assist levels. Removing credit bonuses from assists in FM7 means that, in the future, T10 could do the same thing. It always seemed silly using manual+clutch on something like a prototype simply because it grabbed me a few extra credits. Now, the cars can be simulated more accurately, without players receiving less credits for it.

 

[ImaRobot]

I guess I just don't like the AI to put up much of a fight.... I'm more interested in the challenge of driving cleanly, so I'm fine with completely disabling the racing line, rewind, enabling full damage, etc. Basically the AI is the lowest priority for me, so if cranking it up makes thing too difficult, it's the first thing I cut.

That's fine, and with FM6 the races in the career mode didn't push for clean driving, more so smash your way to the front because you only have 3 laps on a track that takes less than a minute to lap. However, like @Symtex said, if you put the race length to long, it really makes for an enjoyable race experience, while still being able to race clean. However, with the way you go about it, you're the one getting negatively affected by the changes and I understand the frustration with the system.

 

[Lain]

But, I think this has been partially blown out of proportion (and yes, I realize that it was my article ). A good chunk of it is from people who aren't familiar with the game — by choice or otherwise — jumping in with the "OMG MICROTRANSACTIONS" rants. These are people with no real experience with how the previous games' economies have worked, but see "prize crate", "future MTs", and immediately put them together as a sure thing.

That's rather assumptive, don't you think? How do you know people's experience with the series? Besides, I'm the main person here beating the dead horse known as microtransaction rants, and I've played every Forza except for 7 (and that'll be corrected just as soon as it finishes downloading).

Regarding the auction house issue, that's already been brought up... and I don't buy it. It wouldn't be that difficult to keep cheats from affecting it.

And yeah, microtransactions are nothing new, and certainly not exclusive to Forza... but as I've already said, I'm harping against the idea of microtransactions in general, not Forza 7's implementation specifically. I'm just here talking about it in the context of Forza 7 since it's the latest and greatest.

 

[ImaRobot]

That's rather assumptive, don't you think? How do you know people's experience with the series? Besides, I'm the main person here beating the dead horse known as microtransaction rants, and I've played every Forza except for 7 (and that'll be corrected just as soon as it finishes downloading).

it is, but to be honest it's exactly what it seems like. The people here on this board that have actually played the game doesn't seem to have an issue with how the economy is balanced, it's quite generous but not overly so. Those most vocal about it make it seem like there is a push to buy these things because of an unbalanced economy, and that these crates are in your face and obtrusive, when its quite the opposite. Is that how everyone comes across? No, you're a shining example of that, but it is happening, a lot.

 

[Lain]

Fair enough... I mostly stick to the off-topic section, so I guess I just haven't run across those types. 👍

 

[Symtex]

Fair enough... I mostly stick to the off-topic section, so I guess I just haven't run across those types. 👍

It's fine to have concern about micro-transaction but I've seen a lot of shady journalism on the web aims are generating views and increase ads revenue for their site. Don't be fool here by the fake outrage. The mods are totally useless in Forza 7 and nothing else is locked behind loot create. It's as benign as it gets.

 

[Northstar]

Honestly can't believe people are defending this though.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm not defending the practice. What I am doing is trying to get people to stop jumping to conclusions when we only have a small amount of info.

All we know right now is there will be micro-transactions in the game. That's it. We don't know what you will be able to do with them and we don't know what they will cost. They could very well be used to sell loot crates, or they could serve the same role they have for the last 6 years. We simply don't know at this point.

This isn't something limited to Forza either, this behavior is what leads us to thinking Tom Petty is dead 12 hours before he actually is.

 

[sems4arsenal]

I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm not defending the practice. What I am doing is trying to get people to stop jumping to conclusions when we only have a small amount of info.

All we know right now is there will be micro-transactions in the game. That's it. We don't know what you will be able to do with them and we don't know what they will cost. They could very well be used to sell loot crates, or they could serve the same role they have for the last 6 years. We simply don't know at this point.

This isn't something limited to Forza either, this behavior is what leads us to thinking Tom Petty is dead 12 hours before he actually is.

Which can't bring anything pro-consumer to the table.

 

[SlipZtrEm]

That's rather assumptive, don't you think? How do you know people's experience with the series? Besides, I'm the main person here beating the dead horse known as microtransaction rants, and I've played every Forza except for 7 (and that'll be corrected just as soon as it finishes downloading).

What's assumptive about saying some people making this into a big deal have no real experience with the series? That Jim video is just one example, and there's a few people in this very thread that have said as much.

Regarding the auction house issue, that's already been brought up... and I don't buy it. It wouldn't be that difficult to keep cheats from affecting it.

Let's look at it this way. Let's say T10 implemented cheat codes for any car in the game. Any car that was grabbed via cheat code, however, would be locked away from any online features, to promote fairness. No Rivals, no Auction House, no online multiplayer. Achievements would have to be disabled, too. Does that extend to sharing tuning setups, too?

As a developer, T10 would now be stuck promoting the ultimate solo sandbox experience, but by making it completely and utterly separate to Microsoft's XBL ecosystem — a very important source of income. It'd also be effectively destroying any sense of progression in the game. Considering you can rent any of the vehicles already... what's the difference?

And yeah, microtransactions are nothing new, and certainly not exclusive to Forza... but as I've already said, I'm harping against the idea of microtransactions in general, not Forza 7's implementation specifically. I'm just here talking about it in the context of Forza 7 since it's the latest and greatest.

That's odd. I figured the proposed/hypothetical implementation of MTs in FM7 specifically would be why most people would be bothered. Not just MTs in general.

All we know right now is there will be micro-transactions in the game. That's it.

Strictly speaking, we don't even know that. For all we know, T10 could modify its plans after this huge backlash.

 

[Dave A]

After owning the game since last Friday I can honestly say I'm not bothered. If the games economy was so broken I hadn't been able to afford any of the cars I want or need so far then it would seem like a dirty move, but there's not shortgage of ways to earn credits from actually drivingand racing whith or without the mod cards. I usually forget to enable the mod cars in most races, but even then I'm getting decent credit payouts for 7-9 lap races in the career and in free play. The only loot crates I've bought we're to see if I could get lucky with a legendary car, but I hand more than enough credits to buy it and not be too bummed I didn't get one.

I don't want to be able to afford a supercar after 10 laps, but I don't want attempting to obtain one take 20 days of grinding. Which leads me to another issue, if you'reobsessed with only beating the career modes as fast as you can, you "may" I imaginehave to re-do a series or two twice to buy the cars needed, I've not had to so far, but I've been splicing my time in Free Play driving the cars I've won or bought when leveling up as well as the ones I've actually spent my credits on.

The system to me seems very balanced at the moment and while sure, it is a cheap way for Turn10 to make more money out of people, those that use it are doing so willingly. I'm not a fan of the practice, but it certainly doesn't ruin the game for me to know they are coming, assuming they don't change the current payouts (excluding any known exploits which they have every right to fix).

Besides as @SlipZtrEm said, for some people time is money. I don't spend a tenth of the timeplaying games now than I did 6 years ago and while I'm never persuaded to pay for faster progress in games, I don't judge those that do. Whose to say why some people send £10's of thousands on online games (which some people do), it's up to them if they have the money and enjoy it. People saying it's like paying for nothing, for free progress, isn't that what buying a game is anyway, we're buying something that allows us to make fake money to buy fake cars we don't own ato drive onfake tracks in a virtual envirnment. We do it because it's fun, some people might have more fun if they progress faster, it's up to them.

In conclusion, as long as it's not forced, and the economy isn't changed to tie in with these MT's, I have no concern. Should they change the economy to make earning £100k a full days work then Turn 10 would be wrong IMO but that's an if that I don't beleive have been supported by previous titles, so let's wait and see.

 

[SPhilli911]

I'll separate this, because it has to be said again as a lot of people are complaining about the lack of payouts with assists. Drivitar difficulty, if set to unbeatable, will net you a 100% increase in credits.

This is something I've been meaning to try along with increasing the race length (something I wasn't aware I can change until recently). I've been keeping my drivitar difficulty at above average because races were simply too short to be fun at a higher difficulty. But a 100% payout can fix a lot of my problems. 👍