Great news for players as developer The Coalition states that Gears 5 will not have loot boxes or a season pass. All DLC maps will be free for matchmaking as well for private play. In a message written to players on June 20, the developer wrote that “In Gears 5, our goal is to create a player-first experience when it comes to in-game content, and it starts with this.”
Instead, players will earn content through the all-new Tour of Duty system, and all store purchases will be direct, with no RNG to dictate what is received. Players will always be aware of exactly what they are receiving for their hard-earned consumer dollars. Here is a summary of the new changes coming into the game.
Tour of Duty – Earnable Content
The developers have written that they are looking to deliver more earnable content than ever before through this new system, which will provide Daily Challenges and seasonal Medals that can be ranked up to earn customization content, such as character skins.
From the beginning, players will know exactly what steps they need to complete in a season to earn a specific item, which puts players in greater control. Asides from Tour of Duty, players will also be able to earn rewards in other ways, such as placing on leaderboards in Escape or Versus.
Supply Drops
Every minute that players devote to playing, across every multiplayer mode, will contribute towards a random item drop from a unique pool of content that they developers call Supply. Duplicates are destroyed for Scrap, which in turn can be spent to craft Supply items or character skills a player may wish to update. Best of all, all Supply drops and their contents cannot be purchased with real-world money, they must be earned by playing the game.
Purchasable Exclusive Content
These will be the only items that can be acquired through Iron, the premium in-game currency, from the shop. As stated, there is no RNG, so players are in control of what they get. No items provide any competitive advantage, they will be purely cosmetic. Iron will also be earnable in small amounts by playing the game.
Boost
The Boost is a new purchasable item in the game that provides accelerated progression for real-world time, offering Double Multiplier XP, Double Character XP for Escape and Horde, and Double Speed Supply Drop Progression. For those who have played Blizzard’s Heroes of the Storm, this boost sounds exactly like the one from that game.
The news is a breath of fresh air during a time when companies like EA scrap the absolute bottom of the barrel when trying to argue through lawyers that loot boxes are loved by players because of the “element of surprise” they provide.
As legislators and consumers become more savvy to the garbage and manipulation of some of the worst organizations, we are likely to see a move like what we see in Gears 5, where companies will no longer be able to rely in addictive loot mechanics and instead will need to provide quality products for their consumers if they wish to acquire their hard-earned money.
Gears 5 will release on September 10, 2019 on Xbox One and PC.