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Forza 5: The monetization is even worse than you think.

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I love the smell of hyperbole in the morning ;)

It's not hyperbolic at all.

There are basically two ways that a company could approach a product. They could give you as much stuff as they can while still generating a profit, or they can give you as little as possible while generating a profit. It's clear that MS have opted for the latter of these two approaches with Xbone. They are giving you ancient hardware and charging you a premium for it, they're asking you to pay for virtually every service, they're asking you to pay more for fitness or music services, they're charging you the same price as ever for a new Forza game with fewer cars, with a day-one DLC pack, asking you to pay essentially the cost of an entirely new game to bring the car count to a point still lower than every previous entry in the series, and they add microtransations on the off chance that anybody is stupid enough to think that paying $7 for a virtual car is a good deal.

I find Xbone, as a product, very difficult to like. It's the term 'diversifying revenue streams', given concrete form.
 
Welp, my idea about buying an Xbone just for Forza 5 just went out the window. Not even worth it.

I guess I'll be waiting for Driveclub and Gran Turismo 7. :\

Spot on. I hope that Microsoft realises that while they might make a comfortable profit in the short term by nickle and diming the ignorant and the foolish, this kind of abhorrent behavior completely dissuades me from investing in the platform.

To put things in simple terms for the monkeys at Microsoft:
  • I was going to buy an Xbox One for Forza 5
  • I am now -once again- completely disinterested in the platform and will be directing my expendable income towards Nintendo and Sony this holiday period
 
That's a really rough estimate, and probably not fair. The rewards seem to go up the longer you play and advance through the game. Still, its over 300% so unless there something else going on or inaccuracies then there is a noticeable decrease in reward per time spent. The freaking game is astonishingly beautiful, they should get credit for that.

Has the prices of the purchasable tokens been adjusted or were the numbers posted earlier updated? This is to ask if the "Best Value" is still the most expensive, tokens per currency?

Aye, I'll freely admit that's a real back-of-a-napkin calculation. That said, I think it would be fair to say that overall, you'll earn more credits per hour in Forza 4 compared to Forza 5.
 
I would like to point out that NFS rivals only has ONE micro transaction, 9.99 for all upgrades, liveries and pursuit tech for both cops and racers. And this is EA who is the king of money games. I honestly don't understand why Turn 10 would do this, it's pretty much franchise suicide.
 
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It's not hyperbolic at all.

There are basically two ways that a company could approach a product. They could give you as much stuff as they can while still generating a profit, or they can give you as little as possible while generating a profit. It's clear that MS have opted for the latter of these two approaches with Xbone. They are giving you ancient hardware and charging you a premium for it, they're asking you to pay for virtually every service, they're asking you to pay more for fitness or music services, they're charging you the same price as ever for a new Forza game with fewer cars, with a day-one DLC pack, asking you to pay essentially the cost of an entirely new game to bring the car count to a point still lower than every previous entry in the series, and they add microtransations on the off chance that anybody is stupid enough to think that paying $7 for a virtual car is a good deal.

I find Xbone, as a product, very difficult to like. It's the term 'diversifying revenue streams', given concrete form.

Nails it on the head. With Microsoft still holding off basic functionality behind XBL Gold subs, and peppering all their published games with microtransactions it is fairly obvious that Microsoft is trying to milk the brand for everything it is worth this generation.

As much as I want there to be competition for Sony, I can't help but desire Microsoft crashing and burning as hard as possible when they drum up policies like this.
 
Nails it on the head. With Microsoft still holding off basic functionality behind XBL Gold subs, and peppering all their published games with microtransactions it is fairly obvious that Microsoft is trying to milk the brand for everything it is worth this generation.

As much as I want there to be competition for Sony, I can't help but desire Microsoft crashing and burning as hard as possible when they drum up policies like this.

Look at it this way, there's gotta be someone that makes a regrettable example out of themselves so that the others (Sony) don't follow suit.
 
Nails it on the head. With Microsoft still holding off basic functionality behind XBL Gold subs, and peppering all their published games with microtransactions it is fairly obvious that Microsoft is trying to milk the brand for everything it is worth this generation.

As much as I want there to be competition for Sony, I can't help but desire Microsoft crashing and burning as hard as possible when they drum up policies like this.

While crashing and burning is a bit much (Sony need the competition - remember $599?), they clearly need a bigger telling off than gamers gave them after the DRM revelations. The 1 million sales announcement made me sad for this very reason.
 
Those people dont need high end cars to get into sim racing. They cant even handle them.
They re too much concerned about being able to drive without assists one day. And before that, to learn the tracks.

This alone takes... Years?

Sorry, but that comes across as quite condescending. Forza and GT are financially viable based on sales to the "hardcore" and the "casuals".

If Forza do continue down this path, it will turn into the kind of situation you see with games like iRacing. High barrier to entry with the few players bearing the brunt of the development cost.
 
Of course there are people who are willing to spend that, that is why publishers are treating their customers like marks, or potential whales, or gambling addicts instead of regular gamers. And that is why it naive to think more games would arise that wouldn't need it. There is absolutely a market for it, and they are exploiting it. That doesn't mean it is fine. That is the real reason this shit succeeds, because there are very real psychological reasons why people can be often pushed to spend that kind of money. In that sense, they dictate it, because they know they can get away with it. That is the reason why things like the FIFA Ultimate Team is there, because developers realized there were some people willing to spend $5k a month on that, so they are going to give them more avenues to keep doing it, regardless if the real value is there for everyone else.

.

There is a morality aspect to this as well. Preying on people with addictive personalities is evil, whether it be alcohol, nicotine, gambling, narcotics, or exploitative videogame mechanics. So yeah, when people say EA is vile or Zynga evil, there is an element of truth.
 
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There is a morality aspect to this as well. Preying on people with addictive personalities is evil, whether it be alcohol, nicotine, gambling, narcotics, or exploitative videogame mechanics. So yeah, when people say EA is vile or Zynga evil, there is an element of truth.

I've always agreed with this, but all i ever hear is "well, they don't have to buy it", which i think is bullshit, frankly. They're just taking advantage of people who can't help themselves.
 
Those people dont need high end cars to get into sim racing. They cant even handle them.
They re too much concerned about being able to drive without assists one day. And before that, to learn the tracks.

This alone takes... Years?



So we re both cry babys...

When did forza become a racing sim?
 
I see why M$ chose this path. They have investors to answer to. If 1/10 of those one million day one Xbox One owners buy this game and purchase content then this strategy worked.

This is awful for gamers. I crunched the numbers stated earlier in this posf that referenced 985 hours. It would take a little over a month and a half to earn that amount. That number rounds up 168 hours in a week to 170 and does not include sleeping. This sucks big time and I don't regret purchasing an Xbox One on the first day. Right out the gate they came with fuck yous for everybody with this game.

We're about to get screwed this generation. Imagine Halo like this. An exec at M$ looking over balance sheets plotting to increase revenue and decides that IGP are the way to go.

We forced the 180s by generating awareness. Most of the posters in this thread don't support this. The best thing we can do is refuse to buy this game. Holding publishers accountable for this by simply avoiding the game will curve these policies.
 
Sorry, but that comes across as quite condescending. Forza and GT are financially viable based on sales to the "hardcore" and the "casuals".

If Forza do continue down this path, it will turn into the kind of situation you see with games like iRacing. High barrier to entry with the few players bearing the brunt of the development cost.

I neither see a high entry in fm5 nor in any gt for casuals. They start low and tune into the game as they get better.
Both are still far away from something like iracing. In iracing, you already got to know what you re doing.

Gt and fm just keep a few cars away from free play. Like the newey car or the lotus. You can take all indys, classic f1s or lmp cars in free play.

Gt and fm give you a career to start low and become "hardcore". But both have something, like a gem, for the already hardcore to achieve.


When did forza become a racing sim?

If these hardcore sims, five years ago, where called sims. So gt and fm are sims these days. They re already on that level... A matter of perspective. Both arent iracing, thats right. But doesnt make them lesser.

Edit:
The difference is, that both are accessable with a gamepad! You cant compare gt/fm gameplay in itself with gamepad or wheel. they re whole new games.

Edit2:
I already made 500k in forza and didnt play a lot. So it cant be that bad. Gta5 took far more time for.... Anything
 
I see why M$ chose this path. They have investors to answer to. If 1/10 of those one million day one Xbox One owners buy this game and purchase content then this strategy worked.

This is awful for gamers. I crunched the numbers stated earlier in this posf that referenced 985 hours. It would take a little over a month and a half to earn that amount. That number rounds up 168 hours in a week to 170 and does not include sleeping. This sucks big time and I don't regret purchasing an Xbox One on the first day. Right out the gate they came with fuck yous for everybody with this game.

We're about to get screwed this generation. Imagine Halo like this. An exec at M$ looking over balance sheets plotting to increase revenue and decides that IGP are the way to go.

We forced the 180s by generating awareness. Most of the posters in this thread don't support this. The best thing we can do is refuse to buy this game. Holding publishers accountable for this by simply avoiding the game will curve these policies.

I can already see it. Map packs every month and all playlists require it, buy items for your online player, and so on.
 
I'm amazed how many people (mostly juniors, I might add) are here defending this obvious, hyper greedy money grab as a good thing. It's quite sad to think that people would stand up and white knight for a company that's obviously trying to see how far they can bend people before they break and say 'fuck off' to microtransactions. Apparently some of us aren't going to break at all, but rather choose to say 'give us MORE' while pretending that hundreds of hours of grinding in an incomplete game is a suitable substitute for shelling out ever more cash.

Ugh.
 
LOL too make them exclusuve like in real life. It's for the money and they know people will pay it for their favorite cars. If it was truly about exclusiveness they would put a cap on how many exclusive cars could be purchased.

Edit: I thought they were originally doing a car pack for $50 or something. Did they drop tgat for this?
 
Stuff like this is why I wish MS just made their Kinect TV box and got the fuck out of gaming. Turn 10 could shine with another publisher.
 
I'm amazed how many people (mostly juniors, I might add) are here defending this obvious, hyper greedy money grab as a good thing. It's quite sad to think that people would stand up and white knight for a company that's obviously trying to see how far they can bend people before they break and say 'fuck off' to microtransactions. Apparently some of us aren't going to break at all, but rather choose to say 'give us MORE' while pretending that hundreds of hours of grinding in an incomplete game is a suitable substitute for shelling out ever more cash.

Ugh.

I have to wheel out the words 'possible shill', at least for some jrs. But gaf is pretty good at not letting that bs wreck threads post E3.
 
This practice is disgusting.

I don't see how anyone can look at this as anything other than a blatant cash grab. It's just so goddamn obvious. I swear Turn10 could literally say "we did this for the money" in a press release and there'd be people in here tripping over themselves to defend it still.
 
- No Free Cars for levelling up
- No free upgrades for Manufacturer affinity
- No reward cars for events
- Constantly telling you how you could double your XP and Credits buy buying tokens.
- Recommending you cars that are DLC, and you can't just buy the car on it's own most times, you have to get the entire DLC.
- No Auction house to sell and share cars. No more gifting cars either.

Don't like what they've done with the game at all. Forza 4 was damn near perfect. The career was so well done. They just had to go and mess with a pretty damn good formula.

The career mode was terrible in Forza 4. They just sent you around tracks over and over again. I mean, there's a *LITTLE* more to getting better at driving than just going around over and over in faster cars for more and more laps with zero guidance from the game.

I was laughing at the announcer every time i started a new race. "Here we are, returning back again, at the Nurburgring, for the eighth time." Or the start of a new year ... "Even faster cars and even longer races". Turn 10 is creatively bankrupt, and this latest release showed it.
 
I see why M$ chose this path. They have investors to answer to. If 1/10 of those one million day one Xbox One owners buy this game and purchase content then this strategy worked.

This is awful for gamers. I crunched the numbers stated earlier in this posf that referenced 985 hours. It would take a little over a month and a half to earn that amount. That number rounds up 168 hours in a week to 170 and does not include sleeping. This sucks big time and I don't regret purchasing an Xbox One on the first day. Right out the gate they came with fuck yous for everybody with this game.

We're about to get screwed this generation. Imagine Halo like this. An exec at M$ looking over balance sheets plotting to increase revenue and decides that IGP are the way to go.

We forced the 180s by generating awareness. Most of the posters in this thread don't support this. The best thing we can do is refuse to buy this game. Holding publishers accountable for this by simply avoiding the game will curve these policies.
Why are investors being so aggressive. In the past it didn't see as apparent.
 
Why are investors being so aggressive. In the past it didn't see as apparent.

Since Gungho was briefly valued more than Nintendo?

when it found out how to simulate sounds racing car makes.

no but seriously...

Theres no question of the effort and time put into the actual simulation and tire model in Forza. The rest, well...

I just thought the goal of a sim was to accurately simulate the activity, like flight sims or the training games military guys use; and forza is not that. I didn't mean it in a derogatory sense.
 
I think of racing games as sports games, because you know, motorSPORTS. Having those concepts are sometimes weird. If people think it's fine to spend 200-300 hours playing to unlock the content, then i guess i'm just the minority, but imagine if sports games started doing the same:

unlock LeBron, unlock the Lakers, unlock the Patriots, start of as the Cleveland Browns or the Charlotte Bobcats... it's just stupid.

The whole fun is about the actual gameplay, not gaining privileges. You can bear it some, but it starts being an issue when it becomes an enduring grind, like in this case.

Imagine if someone wants to rent this just to see how the game simulates the formula 1 models...

Like in every other greedy abusing thread, what shocks me the most is not the company trying to get more money, it's the people ready to bend over and defend just about any type of BS the companies can think of.
 
Well this game just went from a day one* purchase to never. Those are absolutely ridiculous.

*day one being when I buy my Xbox.
 
Token cost of all cars in the game comes to 168993
if bought at simplest token value cost of 8000 per $100 usd, that comes to $2200. you could probably bring it in a bit cheaper by buying the remaining balance with smaller amounts instead of the 8000 lot.
if bought at the least value cost of 1250 per $20 that comes to $2700.
cheapest overall brings it to $1690 with 100 tokens per dollar..

da fuq?
That's exactly the kind of breakdown I wanted to see on here. Thanks!

$1690 at the best possible value to buy all the cars in a $60 game.
 
I didn't think it would be possible to ruin a forza game, yet here we are.

Under what conditions was this game reviewed? If the review copy is free, wouldn't all the dlc be free also? How is this not reflected in their review? What they don't think its necessary information??
 
LAWD HAVE MERCY


I told people this was coming..."no man, you don't have to buy it!"...."so what? its only ___"


The dark clouds were forming people, and now its raining blood
 
What are the odds that if this makes a big enough shit-storm they will patch out some of the most egregious grinding? And I imagine most people would be like "Good on them for listening to the fans" and we will all forget about it.

This is gonna be a hard generation if garbage like this is how we start.
 
The only way for this to end is for gamers to vote with their wallet. There are 3 acceptable monetization formats I am willing to accept:

1) Flat cost for a game, everything should be on the disc and able to be unlocked with reasonable play time.
2) Freemium - The game is free and they can offer transactions all over the place. With freemium you know what you are getting into.
3) Monthly subscription (e.g. MMOs) where you are getting new content on a regular basis. I think this truthfully only works for MMORPGs and even those have pretty much gone by the wayside as far as payments.

That I see NO "journalist" straight up confronting MS on Forza 5 and flat out saying "You're asking gamers to buy a $60 game and right out of the gate you are offering a $50 DLC for things that have traditionally been a part of a retail game. That's $110 - how does this make sense for gamers?"
 
I have to wheel out the words 'possible shill', at least for some jrs. But gaf is pretty good at not letting that bs wreck threads post E3.

I should say I'm not accusing anybody of being a shill, it's just that I (personally) find it hard to believe that anybody could be solidly in the 'pro-microtransactions + DLC in $60 AAA titles' camp, yet here we are.

I'm steering way clear of Xbox One until I see if this becomes par for the course for first party titles, or if it really is just a case of testing the waters. Either way, I don't like it a bit.
 
I don't have a problem with DLC in general. Gears of War has weapon skins out the wazoo, and those all cost real money, and if you want to collect them all it's going to be expensive. I'm ok with that, because I can play the entire game and never buy a skin and be happy.

But this is ridiculous.
 
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