{"id":5747,"date":"2017-11-20T23:59:00","date_gmt":"2017-11-20T23:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/310085"},"modified":"2017-11-20T23:59:00","modified_gmt":"2017-11-20T23:59:00","slug":"ea-devs-dial-down-microtransaction-pressure-in-latest-need-for-speed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2017\/11\/20\/ea-devs-dial-down-microtransaction-pressure-in-latest-need-for-speed\/","title":{"rendered":"EA devs dial down microtransaction pressure in latest Need for Speed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Less than two weeks after the release of Ghost Games’\u00a0Need for Speed Payback<\/em>, the team has pushed an update<\/a> to the game that effectively speeds up players’ progression through the game’s\u00a0systems by increasing rewards of in-game currencies.<\/p>\n

What makes this particular update interesting is how\u00a0it potentially lowers\u00a0pressure\u00a0players feel to spend real money (via\u00a0“Speed Points” premium currency) to speed up their progression; this change\u00a0comes amidst a flurry of updates aimed at similarly easing players’ progression through\u00a0Star Wars Battlefront II.<\/em><\/p>\n

EA released both games this month and, taken together, they paint a picture of big-budget teams (at EA, and perhaps elsewhere) struggling to find the right balance to strike when implementing progression mechanics, virtual currency systems, and\u00a0microtransaction\u00a0opportunities in full-priced games.<\/p>\n

The sticking point in both cases seems to be that players feel the games are too demanding in terms of how much virtual currency they have to accrue to unlock in-game rewards (often received semi-randomly by opening “loot crate” analogs), and they feel pressured to spend real money to potentially speed up the process.<\/p>\n

In response, a Ghost Games representative took to Reddit over the weekend to announce that the game is being changed to make earning in-game currencies like “Rep” and “Bank” easier in an effort to ”\u00a0make the progression, especially around the ownership of cars, a much more enjoyable experience.”<\/p>\n

By contrast, the dev team behind\u00a0Battlefront II\u00a0<\/em>said last week that after a number of<\/a> attempts to address player complaints<\/a> about the game’s progression system,\u00a0they would just temporarily turn off all microtransactions<\/a>\u00a0while they sorted things out.<\/p>\n

It was a big enough deal that some\u00a0NFS\u00a0<\/em>fans have speculated Ghost Games’ changes to\u00a0Payback\u00a0<\/em>are a direct response, but the afore-mentioned representative claimed<\/a>\u00a0that “all this was already happening” before\u00a0Battlefront II\u00a0<\/em>was pushed into the limelight<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Less than two weeks after the release of Ghost Games’\u00a0Need for Speed Payback, the team has pushed an update to the game that effectively speeds up players’ progression through the game’s\u00a0systems by increasing rewards of in-game currencies. What makes this particular update interesting is how\u00a0it potentially lowers\u00a0pressure\u00a0players feel to spend real money (via\u00a0“Speed Points” premium […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5748,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}