You can now pay to by COD Points in Black Ops 4, but bizarrely theyre a timed exclusive until next week.
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You can pinpoint the exact moment that Sony won the current generation, it was when Activision switched from partnering with Xbox for Call Of Duty and turned instead to PlayStation.
But rather than a month-long head start on map packs, as it was last gen, Sony gets a weeks timed exclusivity on everything, including… microtransactions.
Youd think that was more a positive than a negative for the other formats but you can now buy COD Points to use in multiplayer, Zombies, and Blackout.
COD Points cost £1.79 for 200, £8.49 for 1,100, £16.79 for 2,400, £34.99, and a staggering £84.99 for 13,000.
In multiplayer and Blackout the points are used to access Special Orders and buy cosmetic items in the games Black Market, while in Zombies mode theyre used to buy Nebulium Plasma.
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You can still unlock everything simply by playing the game but it would take an enormous amount of time to get everything. Thats always been the case (even though its recently been sped up) but now fans are suspicious that the reason it was slow in the first place is to make microtransactions seem more tempting.
To unlock all 200 tiers would require 20,000 COD Points, which using the above amounts would cost over £130.
The whole system is very clearly inspired by Fortnites Battle Passes and while all the new outfits, stickers, gestures and other items are purely cosmetic, and so dont affect gameplay, thats not going to stop kids in particular from wanting them all.
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You still cant buy Reserves (aka supply drops, aka loot boxes) directly but since you can now pay to progress through the tiers youre able to get at them and their single, random item without actually playing anything.
Theres been worse microtransaction systems before this (hello, Star Wars: Battlefront II) but its all a considerable step beyond even last years WWII…
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