343 Industries’ Halo 5: Guardians will be introducing quite a lot of new features to the franchise but one particular aspect that’s stood out are microtransactions. These have been implemented by way of the new REQ System which allows players to unlock new cosmetic items and weaponry for use in multiplayer. While REQ Points can be used to buy REQ Packs, they can also be purchased for real money.
This doesn’t mean the developer is gating off REQ Packs or pushing players to buy them though. Speaking to GameSpot, design director Kevin Franklin said that the microtransactions don’t translate to “spend-more-to-win”.
“There’s no crazy special items that are only going to be reserved for people who spend a lot more money. Also, you get a lot of rewards whether you’re playing Arena or Warzone, so you’re always going to have a ton of stuff that you’ll be able to use. The biggest thing for us the moment we started even talking about this system was that the game has to be balanced. At the end of the day, it’s a multiplayer game.
“It’s not a spend-more-to-win game. We wanted to make sure that if you spend a whole ton of money, and you thought you could get five Scorpions just because you spent more money, it’s not going to work. You’re still going to have to earn the right to call these Scorpions into the battlefield.”
It works very much like a MOBA in some respects. If you want to unleash your powerful REQ cards on enemies, you’ll have to put in the work necessary. “We have a mid-session progression loop, which any MOBA player will be familiar with. You have to level your character up in-game, every game, by killing enemies, going after A.I., and contributing to your team. Then you’ll unlock the ability to use these cards. So if you have 10 Scorpions, you can’t just call in 10 Scorpions. You actually have an energy system, and that levelling system that will gate you and keep the end-game balanced. And that was really huge–we’re multiplayer designers, we can’t just make a really unbalanced game. It just wouldn’t feel Halo.”
REQ Packs aren’t necessarily out of players’ grasps either with Bronze packs costing 1250 REQ Points, Silver costing 5000 REQ Points and Gold costing 10,000 REQ Points. The developer currently estimates at least 2000 RP being earned for each Warzone match so honestly, it won’t be difficult to unlock numerous packs after a few hours of play.
Halo 5: Guardians is out on October 27th for Xbox One. What are your thoughts on the microtransactions? Let us know in the comments.
