Be Excellent To Each Other

So you've just paid £400-odd quid for a console and then £40-odd for the game

That's properly fucking disgusting; a level of naked money-grubbing bullshit that I'm honestly stunned by.

I'm not big on driving games so maybe everyone else knew this already but the new Forza game on the Xbone has F2P mechanics baked into it? So you've just paid £400-odd quid for a console and then £40-odd for the game and they've made it grindy as hell to encourage you to spend even more money unlocking cars. That's properly fucking disgusting; a level of naked money-grubbing bullshit that I'm honestly stunned by.

Yeah, I've got an app on my phone that does the same thing.

Guy from Microsoft on radio 4 says XBONE can detect your heartbeat by "reading the blood under your skin". That's a direct quote peeps.

In a mind blowing demo, the Kinect then switched to a mode in which it monitored the heart rate of a person standing in front of it using the color cameras to measure how flush the skin was and the infrared cameras to track blood flow underneath the skin. This could ostensibly allow a developer to determine whether a user was scared, or even lying, and could also have health monitoring implications.

Forza 3, 4, and Horizon were the same.

So is anyone getting one of these tomorrow? Anyone pre-ordered or 'ote?

So is anyone getting one of these tomorrow? Anyone pre-ordered or 'ote?

Not from 10 feet across the room though. Or is it done by the controller?

If you go on Reddit, or any of the 'big' mainstream forums the level of support for microtransactions is terrifying. To the extent that a more paranoid me would suspect astroturfing, if only to escape the conclusion that people are just that stupid.

It seems impossible for people (outside of places like this) to grasp that the moment you include microtransactions you create an inescapable, insatiable, inevitable desire in the higher ups to maximise use of said transactions, Over time that leads to grind, tedium and frustration being intentionally engineered into games. Suit's beholden to share holders debating that bottom line, and suggesting countless tweaks. 'Hey, I'm gona need you to increase the exp needed between levels m'kay?' Ad infinitum.

If Dark Souls had microtransactions for Souls/Lvls (but no other changes) then no amount of arguing that it was sublimely balanced would have let me trust the game. Microtransactions by default remove any confidence in a game's design.

Could you really have continued at the Capra Demon for the tenth time with a blinking menu option to buy a level up? The relationship between designer and player is bastardised by microtransactions no matter how slight their purpose or intent.

If you included them you've abandoned the realm of art and embraced the realm of casino. Exploiting the gullible and addicted for profit.

Forza 4 and Horizon had it, so does GTA Online. When all it does is provide shortcuts for those who are cash-rich but time-poor, I guess I'm ok with it. It's no different than the age-old practice of ringing premium-rate cheat lines to unlock everything. However, if they change the mechanics so it's like a F2P game (cooldowns etc) then I'm definitely not ok with that.

Forza has always been a grindy game, anyway.

I know it's not a popular opinion on here, but all things being equal, I really like the look of the XB1. I like the media integration and dashboard. I like the look of it and the fact that it's quiet. I like the controller and the Kinect integration.

Forza has a 6Gb "update". Apparently.

I'm not big on driving games so maybe everyone else knew this already but the new Forza game on the Xbone has F2P mechanics baked into it? So you've just paid £400-odd quid for a console and then £40-odd for the game and they've made it grindy as hell to encourage you to spend even more money unlocking cars. That's properly fucking disgusting; a level of naked money-grubbing bullshit that I'm honestly stunned by.

There are aspects of free-to-play design in the bulk of the Xbox One's launch titles: Ryse has microtransactions that aid progress in its multiplayer mode, while Crimson Dragon's single-player path can also be given a little helping hand by buying in-game currency with real-world money. Elsewhere, Forza Motorsport 5 allows you to boost the rate at which you gain XP for a little extra cost, or to spend money to fast-track your way to a higher end motor. They're all systems proven in the world of free-to-play, but there's a problem: none of these games are free.

Microsoft have said that they've sold 1 million consoles in less than 24 hours. Not as impressive as Sony selling them in just North America, but still very impressive. It seems that people weren't put off by the console as much as we thought they'd be?

Forza has a 6Gb "update". Apparently.

Forza 5's monetisation is a monumental rip-off

Martin Bigg On November 24, 2013
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In the world of free-to-play racing games, if you want to get to the good stuff then you have two options: be prepared to endure some serious grinding, slowly rising up the ranks whilst being drip-fed in-game currency, or part with your cash to bypass it altogether.

It’s a practice that’s been adopted by Microsoft and implemented into Forza Motorsport 5 - in-game tokens can be purchased with real world money to gain access to some of the game’s more prestigious motors.

Except there’s one crucial difference: Forza 5 isn’t free-to-play. Far from it, when you consider the steep cost of the Xbox One, plus a Thrustmaster TX 458 wheel for more serious racers in addition to the £54.99 RRP of the game. And therein lies a serious problem.

As outlined by the outraged NeoGaf community, some of Forza 5’s most sought after cars are inexcusably extortionate.

Case in point: the Lotus E21 formula one car, one of Forza 5’s new star attractions keenly publicised by Microsoft as this is the first game in the series to feature open wheel racecars. What they failed to mention was the astronomical price of admission. In-game, it costs a whopping 6 million credits. Alternatively, at the time of writing you can buy it for 10,000 tokens – in real world cash, this equates to over £60.00. £60.00 for one digital racecar? No. Just no.

The average player, then, won’t ever be able to experience the pleasure of driving this car unless they’re prepared to grind through 60 hours-worth of laborious racing. And that’s before you take into account sifting through menus, tuning the car and practicing to stay competitive. In practice, you could be spending over 100 hours just to drive one car. Yes, there still needs to be a sense of progression and car rarity, but this is unfeasible.

Of course, Microsoft will argue that micro-transactions are entirely optional. But in the case of Forza 5, it’s abundantly obvious that the fundamental game design has been detrimentally altered to endorse in-game purchases.

Unlike in Forza 4, free cars are no longer regularly rwarded for winning races and levelling up – in Forza 5 you have to purchase each and every one of them using in-game credits or tokens. This restricted access is only compounded by the fact that players who don’t have time to grind in the career and simply want to test drive their favourite cars at their leisure can’t experience them in free drive mode. In Forza 4, every car was available to drive in free mode – the catch was that you couldn’t customise or upgrade them outside of the career, which was a fair compromise for casual players. In contrast, free drive in Forza 5 has been stripped-down to just 40 cars.

There are other changes that were clearly engineered as a ploy encouraging you to pour more money into Microsoft’s pot, too. The much-loved manufacturer affinity, where sticking with the same manufacturer reaped regular rewards in Forza 4, has been scrapped altogether, so you can say goodbye to free upgrades. Auction houses to sell and share cars are also gone, and you can’t gift cars either.

Meanwhile, the game is constantly reminding you that you can double your XP and credits by buying tokens, or recommending you cars that can only be bought as DLC. Again, this is the sort of tactic you expect to see in a free-to-play mobile racing game - not in a full price retail console game. Worse still, you can’t even buy a car on its own in the majority of cases – Microsoft obviously want you to buy the entire DLC package. It's pure unbridled greed.

This all has bleak implications for the next generation, as monetisation mechanics start to seep into more racing games. Gran Turismo, for example, has always required excessive grinding before you can afford the more desirable cars - the announcement that optional micro-transactions will be in-place for Gran Turismo 6 could exasperate this debacle. Let’s just hope its arcade mode will give access to the full car roster this time which would alleviate the problem somewhat, as rumours suggest.

At least DriveClub Plus Edition will actually be free-to-play in the proper sense, with the option to buy the full game and access all the content. It’s an exemplary business model that allows everyone to have a free test drive but doesn’t punish players who have already purchased the game – a concept that Microsoft don’t appear to have grasped.

Yeah they can go and get fucked.

Why? There's nothing there that wasn't in Forza 4, and Forza 4 was brilliant.

Why? There's nothing there that wasn't in Forza 4, and Forza 4 was brilliant.

There are two cars in the game which cost 10,000 tokens (Ferrari 250 GTO and some Lotus F1 car) so they would require a spend of $139.97 (1x 8000 tokens @$99.99 and 2x 1250 tokens at $19.99) in order to buy. I make that £86.25 at current US dollar to pound sterling exchange rates. I'd imagine ingame exchange rates are slightly different, but bloody hell, those prices are obscene.

It's not remotely like Forza 4.

That really is ludicrous pricing just to unlock a couple of cars that are on the disk already.

Urge to buy a Bone falling....

Why? There's nothing there that wasn't in Forza 4, and Forza 4 was brilliant.