Halo 5: Guardians will offer microtransactions that allow players to boost their progress in multiplayer. Paying real cash will allow players to buy REQ Packs, allowing them to skip the process of unlocking weapons through play.
343 Industries detailed the microtransaction pricing for REQ Packs and described how they functioned.
Bronze:
- In-game currency cost: 1250 RP
- Real-world money cost: not offered
Silver:
- In-game currency cost: 5000 RP
- Real-world money cost: $2
Gold:
- In-game currency cost: 10,000 RP
- Real-world money cost: $3
Players can earn RP by playing the game normally. 343 says that in-game pricing allows players to purchase one of these packs for every other game they play. Players can earn an average of 2000 RP for every Warzone game played, and will receive 7500 RP to start.
In addition to purchasing REQ Packs separately, Microsoft is offering a Warzone REQ Bundle, which comes with two "Premium" packs every week for seven weeks, to a total of 14. It can be purchased for $25.
Speaking to GameSpot, Halo 5 design director Kevin Franklin defended the move, stating that everything players can earn in the REQ system is available to players regardless of whether they spend money.
"There's no crazy special items that are only going to be reserved for people who spend a lot more money," he said. "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."
Halo 5: Guardians is out on October 27 for the Xbox One.
