@dharmabum: I remember when I had to like them on Facebook to get Ice-T yes. (first and last time I used it) But yeah $20 for these guys i've never heard of is a bit much.

You'd think they would offer them for free to try and gain popularity but I guess they think they're hot shit or something who knows.

Speaking of microtransaction I bought an elite pack the other day (in-game cash) and got some gnasher skins, yay! (also first and last time i'll be doing this)

I've bought 5 horde 10(15) packs and feel alright about it. Also 1 halloween pack which I didn't like as much but at least I could scrap the cards. I don't care about cosmetic stuff, I just want to have max level skills as soon as I open a new slot.

Since I seem to get about 2k coins per horde match I don't really even need to spend money, but sometimes I'm too tired to play so I open packs for progress instead.

What makes this worse is how pathetically glacial the credit drop is from PvP and Horde.

This is the biggest fuck up so far in the Loot Box mechanic that many MP games are employing. They really need to get on this.

@mustainium: Horde isn't too bad now, Sweep and I finished an Insane game this weekend and we each got about 3,500 credits.

Another update from The Coalition's community manager:

I'll be the first to admit that we are new at this economy and microtransaction things.

We plan on making it better. We are going to make some big steps this in the coming week with some pack adjustments, versus earn rate adjustments and some MAJOR MAJOR bounty adjustments.

I want to assure everyone that we do look at this types of comments, negative/positive/neutral. It's all important. It may take us a bit to get there due to the factors of game development but we will get there. I wish we hit that perfect hit at launch but unfortunately that didn't happen. Hoping to get that perfect hit here soon.

Sounds sincere but also like they're buying time to rethink the whole system.

I got the game for free with my video card and have not touched the multiplayer but that seems bad. Mass Effect 3 had a similar system but I never felt like it was too hard to earn in game credits to buy them. I Never used real money and could the good loot crate after a couple of hours.

What is even more pathetic is them trying to get us to buy those random Skin Packs from the tournaments. $7.99 for a lame skin that I'm going to pickup from someone I mow down anyway? I'll pass.

I feel like the developers truly forget about what the core fans want and instead, just try to turn every aspect of the game into a profit. This isn't Pokemon Go...

Welcome to microtransactions in triple-A games. Jim Sterling has talked about this on numerous occasions, and this just continues to highlight the shittiness of it. Between Gears 4, Halo 5, Black Ops III, Infinite Warfare...and the list just keeps on going and going and going and going...

It's a goddamn shame. We know that part of this has to do with the advent of free-to-play games getting such a massive market share (everyone wants that League of Legends money) and the popularity of crates in CS:GO (which none of these other developers seem to realize has a monetary value on a trade market attached to it as well).

The other part, sadly, is on the players. For the last decade, we've proven time and time again that we'll bitch incessantly about how much bullshit microtransactions are...and then we'll gobble up all the shit they throw at us.

This is honestly one of the reasons why the majority of games that I play nowadays ARE free-to-play games (Warframe, Marvel Heroes, League of Legends, etc). If I'm going to have to deal with microtransactions, I'd rather deal with companies that have gotten it RIGHT and aren't trying to screw the player over in the long run. I'm hoping that, at some point, some shooter developer will figure this all out and get it right. I was hoping that Tribes Ascend would be that game...but they've failed so miserably on that.

It's good to hear that Gears 4 multiplayer CAN be fun, though. I enjoyed the multiplayer in the first two (the second far more than the first, despite how busted it could kind of be).

Thanks for the blog, Sweep. As always, genuine and informative.

OP UPDATE 1/Dec/16:

Alright, so I'm now pushing level 100 and it's probably time to weigh in on the updates and changes the devs have made. Most prominent is that it's now a lot quicker to accumulate credits, and the price of loot crates has been reduced since my initial review. I've since completed horde not just on Normal, but on Insane as well; there's a knack to it that basically involves hiding in a corner with a bunch of turrets and hoping the boss bugs out every ten waves so you don't have to fight him until the end. It's not particularly satisfying and it takes fucking hours, but considering every enemy can put you down with a single shot, there's not really many alternatives. You also need a balanced team with a scout that has a good power deposit bonus, and a team with enough self-preservation to allow the aforementioned scout play his class. There also needs to be an engineer whose whole job is basically clicking on fortifications for 3 hours. Anyway.

The game still isn't perfect, but it's better. The new maps, only granted to season pass holders, were initially useless as they weren't included in any of the active playlists. Guns have been slightly rebalanced, though this time around I never got deep enough to really appreciate the subtle differences.

In terms of the microtransactions I abandoned their elite crates and sunk all my credits into horde crates. You won't get any cosmetics ever but it gradually (very gradually) gives you the class abilities you need to compete at the harder horde difficulties. They've also decreased how long it takes to level up your class, which means you can push every class up to level 3 or even 5 without only a couple of horde runs. They're still doing their bullshit special-event overpriced "limited time only purple guns waaah!!!!" sale nonsense, but I'm still bluntly refusing to take part.

Anyway. That was the state of the game a couple of weeks ago. I've since uninstalled it.

Thanks for reading (again)

Love Sweep