It is only activated in the 4v4 modes, there is an option to enable or disable it in every mode, but that option is locked to the aforementioned at the moment.
The fears about competitive being unbalanced due to gear is therefore misplaced.
I've only played the first story mission so far, and not in co-op, so i can't answer how good that part is.
But regarding multiplayer, you can queue up solo, with one or two friends, or as a full team of 4, you can also play custom games against friends if you want.
You can set up all modes so that you are facing bots.
There is also an endless sparring mode, where you can hone your skills against a bot that never attacks back, or one of varying difficulty levels.
@murdoc_: Not even people at Ubisoft seem to agree on the right pronunciation.
@devildoll: What is all this about showing real money? Whether they are showing real money or not is not really relevant here. (Hell, I would argue that in most instances it would be better for games to use only money instead of some made-up currency. Especially when they don't have a 1:1 value.)
I'm really confused now, you don't even accept in-game currency? basically unlocks based on progression?
When I said I wanted the option to hide microtransactions I meant exactly that. You can have your in-game currency but it is completely and utterly removed from any sort of real world payment system.
The in-game currency is pretty close to that, you can earn it perfectly ingame, its just that you can also buy it for real cash if you want.
@devildoll: When you don't have enough in-game currency to buy something, you just can't buy it. End of story. No jump to a store page or some other area where they try to get you to spend real money to make up for the deficit. Nothing. They can tell me how to earn more of it by playing all they want.
In that case what you want is what i suggested in the earlier post, an option to hide those 3 tiles. ( 2 in the store and one on the suggestions on how to get more ingame currency )
Having a store page which combines both the real and the in-game currency purchases is even worse. That would have to change as well.
I'd say that a store that gives you the ability to buy stuff for ingame currency instead of real money is better than a store that only accepts real money.
@murdoc_: Not even people at Ubisoft seem to agree on the right pronunciation.
@devildoll: What is all this about showing real money? Whether they are showing real money or not is not really relevant here. (Hell, I would argue that in most instances it would be better for games to use only money instead of some made-up currency. Especially when they don't have a 1:1 value.)
I'm really confused now, you don't even accept in-game currency?
I mean, it is pretty much another version of unlocks based on progression.
@baconhound: the three things under under the username from left to right is reputation lvl ( basically how many times you have prestieged any of your heroes )
Scavenger crates, which are loot boxes that i believe. you can get them trough finding story mode collectables and as rewards for participating in the online faction war. ( basically worth 500 steel )
And the main currency that you use to buy everything, steel, which you get from daily quests, and rewarded in varying amount depending on your performance every match.
Also the amount of F2P treadmill stuff on a full price game? Jesus.
F2P treadmill? to me it looks like a regular game progression with the ability to buy stuff for real money as well.
I feel no need to spend money on anything in this game, you get currency and gear at a decent enough pace just by playing it normally.
The problem is that most people recoil so strongly as soon as they see any microtransactions that they refuse to actually learn how bad it is.
There is nothing in this game that requires you to pay.
Seeing them is the problem. If I am paying 60-100 USD/Euro/GBP for a video game I do not want to see anything in the game trying to get me to spend more money. Not even purely cosmetic items.
Maybe an option to hide all of it would be a nice middle ground between commerce and player enjoyment?
I basically pay them a lot of money to not see ads. I don't think that's a such strange notion. It exists in other media as well.
Either you go free/extremely cheap and use the ad/mictrotransaction-supported model or you go expensive and you remove the ads/mictrotransactions or at least let people hide them completely.
Combining the worst parts of both models is awful.
I think that there are only two instances where they show you raw dollar signs in the game.
The first one is in the store, where you can buy the season pass, and steel for actual money. But also other items for ingame currency.
And then if you try to buy something and you dont have enough ingame currency to buy it, it will pop up 4 suggestions of things to do, 1 of which is to go to the store and buy steel with real money.
All in all, It is not a game that constantly has popups telling you that you are running out of energy or that you should get an xp booster. ( even if there is a spot to buy that if you choose, for ingame currency )
The option you want to hide all mentions of real money would basically be to hide those two tiles in the store, as well as the tile suggesting you to visit the store when you try to buy something without having enough ingame currency.
But sure, the game is not 100% free from micro-transactions.
Also the amount of F2P treadmill stuff on a full price game? Jesus.
F2P treadmill? to me it looks like a regular game progression with the ability to buy stuff for real money as well.
I feel no need to spend money on anything in this game, you get currency and gear at a decent enough pace just by playing it normally.
You only get one chance to make a first impression... When the main menu of a game looks like some marketing peon barfed all over it, it's going to be awfully hard to convince me that there's a worthwhile game buried somewhere under there.
I guess maybe the next evolution of this kind of garbage will be the ad-free pass that I can buy to make the interface legible again.
What do you mean exaclty? the newsfeeds on the right side?
Devildoll's comments