Forza Motorsport 6‘s $26.95 VIP upgrade gave players exclusive cars, special online events and, best of all, double credit earnings for races. Forza 7‘s $29.95 VIP upgrade swaps the always-on double credit bonus for five limited-use “mod cards”. Boo.
The double racing credit bonus has been the core reason for picking up a VIP pass for Forza since the benefit was introduced in 2013’s Forza Motorsport 5. Players use credit earned in races to purchase new cars in-game, so doubling race rewards is a very big deal to players looking to score the best rides.
What Forza Motorsport 7 has done is replace that core VIP reward with five special VIP mod cards. Tied to the game’s new loot box feature, in which players can opt to spend credits (and eventually real money, as confirmed by Ars Technica) for a chance at limited edition cars, useless cosmetic driver outfits, or cards that modify the rewards given by races based on specific conditions. In previous iterations of the series, players could turn off driver assists such as auto-braking in order to earn better rewards for racing. Now that’s all handled by these mod cards.
The VIP reward cards are limited mod cards that are rewarded to purchases of the VIP Pass, either standalone or included in one of the game’s pricier special editions. Instead of unlimited double race rewards, players are given five cards, each good for double credit rewards in five races. At the beginning of most races (some do not allow the use of mods), players can choose to apply the VIP credit modifier. Once all 25 uses are gone, that’s it.
What’s really rubbing players the wrong way is how the VIP package was, until recently, advertised in the Microsoft store. Up until two days ago, the description read:
Exclusive cars Mods Driver Gear and more await with Forza Motorsport 7 VIP membership! Forza Motorsport 7 VIP members receive exclusive VIP cars. VIPs will receive additional benefits including 100% CR bonus Mods VIP Driver Gear and more. Get your VIP membership today!
While it does say that the 100 per cent credit bonus is in the form of mods, that isn’t exactly clear to someone who has no idea what that means. And since the two previous iterations of the game gave VIP players the 100 per cent bonus without limits, there was no reason to expect otherwise.
On Monday, members of the Forza Reddit noticed the wording had changed. The official listing now reads:
Forza Motorsport 7 VIP membership features exclusive rewards you can’t get anywhere else! Forza Motorsport VIPs receive exclusive VIP cars, VIP Driver Gear Suits, as well as five 100% CR bonus Mod cards (five uses each per card), and more. Get your VIP membership today!
In a statement issued earlier today to Eurogamer, a Turn 10 Studios representative said, “As soon as we heard from our community that there was confusion about the VIP description in the Windows Store, we immediately updated it.”
The message is quite clear now. Unlimited double race winnings is a thing of the past. It’s hardly conducive to the game’s new loot box system, having players running around with extra credits to spend on boxes that might contain mod cards or special cars or stupid outfits.
Seriously, there is no need for these at all.
Forza Motorsport 7 is still a very fine racing game, but this turn towards loot boxes and changes to the VIP bonuses are not a great look.
Comments
21 responses to “Forza 7 Turns The Series’ VIP Upgrade Into Something Not Worth Paying For”
While the majority of Forza 7 has been spectacular for me. The Loot boxes and changes to VIP have been a downer. I always buy the ultimate editions for the car packs. But these changes show that Turn 10 have learned nothing from Forza 5. Its seems like they think because they didnt have any microtransaction stuff in Forza 6 people had forgiven them so if they added it again in Forza 7 all would be good.
I truly do hope Turn 10 fixes this. Make the credit bonus mod cards for VIP unlimited. Do something, Dont pretend your fans arent pissed off at you.
Loot boxes need to bloody die already, especially in full priced titles.
I’m on the fence about it really if the Loot Box rewards do not in any conceivable way alter stats, gameplay, or win/lose conditions then I’m not too worried about them but if they do alter any of the aforementioned items then they should die in a hole. For service style games paid cosmetics(Read: Blizzard Loot Boxes) can be a fun thing to either earn in-game or if you got the cash and you just wanna spin it then yeah they seem okay to me mostly.
Nah bro, they can completely piss right off.
Whilst you perfectly articulated your edgy perspective it doesn’t answer the Game Product Vs Game Service model that consumers expect.
Well work with me here, how would you expect a modern-day studio to continue development of new content for years to come if they have no way of having more cash flow, and before you say that what the $60+ price tag is for… well you’re wrong. The initial price is for the initial game and if players/customers want to expect new content 2, 3, 5, 7 years after the initial release something has to give. All that profit they made from the first purchase isn’t profit if is channelled and redirected into wages/salaries it then becomes an overhead. Would you expect games like Rainbow Six Siege, GTA: Online, Euro Truck Simulator 2, PuBG, and Overwatch to never get new content from their release date? They need money to come from somewhere and it’s either optional cosmetics or paying for each additional character/maps-pack(CoD)/Weapon.
I don’t know how you expect a studio to fund further development of a game either through DLC or cosmetic transactions
I’ve thrown eloquence out the window years ago, so apologies for being blunt.
Consumers don’t expect that. Maybe a couple of years at best for these kind of games. Games like Destiny charge extra for expansions. Forza already does that and all they give you is some shitty new cars.
Secondly, they release a new game every couple of years or less. So needing to support the previous version for longer than about two years is a mute point.
Release the damn game. Maybe sell some good-value DLC 6 months to a year later and then make your money off the next title that’s just around the corner.
Whoever began linking gambling behaviors and other phaychological traps to gaming can go and eat a big bag of dicks.
You may not and I may not expect after the initial transaction but many people have a certain expectation for certain type of games. Due to FPS games running for sometimes decades(See: Quake, TF2) people have expectation built that modern day games should last just as long or at the very least a couple of years. People are clamouring for BF2142 to come back(You can play it through a homebrew method for free online) because the classic SW: Battlefront 2 was reactivated for online play. I hate using this term because it is commonly used as a catch-all phrase but a lot of gamers both young and old hold an entitled viewpoint that their game should work ad infinitum constantly getting the update and new content released.
Also regarding the adding psychological traps well as early as Pong the video have there been designing decisions to make you lose to spend more money.
The reasoning was different but the end result was the same, you the consumer spending more money.
I also they’re double dipping. They already have their car pass. Which apropo, I think sucks since most of the cars are not ones I’d want.
Now they’re adding stupid micro transaction based gambling style loot boxes.
I think it’s the gambling aspect that shits me. Paying for a chance at something random.
And then also removing stuff consumers are used to. Like extra credit with the VIP pass. That’s just bad business.
To be clear the way Forza 7 has done it is most assuredly a crapshoot way of trying to implement loot boxes with minimal damage to the player base, alongside the shit NBA2K17 which I decided not to purchase after seeing how crap the VC system is.
We have been having this discussion for years now and back then people had a go at me for using the slippery slope argument.
I like to think we have reached to point where we can agree that yes publishers have greased their feet and are on the slope.
Gameplay in full priced games is now being changed to accommodate selling loot boxes. NBA2K18 is probably the best example of this and you can add the new Forza to that list.
I don’t know about greasing their feet, I have this mental image of an anthropomorphised publisher logo standing at the top of a slip and slide with the bottle of dishwashing detergent, piling it on before taking a run up…
After reading this, I’m out, and I was thinking of the X1X to go with it.
I can’t believe they are doing this BS again after the CF that Forza 5 was.
Yes, me too, was going to hold out for this until X1X was out.
Was also going to pick this up with the 1X as I haven’t played a Forza non-Horizon in a while but just no. So over all this loot box/grinding/lottery crap infecting games everywhere.
Missed out on a few games I’ve refused to buy this year because of this dodgy rubbish (really wanted the new LOTR but that can whistle too) and thankfully – given there are so many games around nowadays – I can honestly say I don’t feel like I’ve missed out all that much.
If loot boxes/purchases don’t both you then more power to you, but I just long for the days where I pay money and get the full game in a complete state (expansions packs notwithstanding) – doesn’t seem likely it’ll ever become the norm again though, the consumer base is so fractured on the subject it seems incredibly unlikely.
How about updating the game to give you a CR boost like the other games did, you muppets.
Ffs
Wait wait wait, so making the game harder no lobger nets more xp and credits?
Is the article correct?
Yes that is correct. There is no Xp/Credits difference between having all assists on or off.
Boooo. No Toyota’s and now this?
Turning up the Drivertar difficulty gives you bonus credits or exp (can’t remember which one off the top of my head)
MODS (e.g. day/night cycles) can increase rewards but they themselves are subject to be randomly rewarded or bought using said in-game currencies.
In game driver difficulty gives more credits but having all the assist off won’t increase the race reward
Turn 10 sold out and became a giant flaming bag of s***. There is literally no other way to describe it.
The reason why people loved the old games was to race their crappy old cars that were ‘done-up’ against super/hyper cars AND BEAT THEM. Now they include 700 different forms of race cars and a few crummy cars (Be it no Toyota and limited other manufacturers). It’s what made Forza 3/4 so different from the others but they’ve slowly degraded it to be another Gran Turismo/Project Cars copy.
Rest in peace Forza, although I spent far too many all nighters enjoying your company, I don’t love you anymore.
2005 – Paying for Horse Armour, WTF?
2012 – It’s fine I don’t mind it’s just cosmetic
2017 – Hey the 2005 community was right
I just realised that the VIP benefits from buying the deluxe edition aren’t permanent compared to when I preordered the game months ago…. if I had known, I would’ve just bought the cheaper version. Can we get refunds from Microsoft?