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The new Guitar Hero has a new form of Microtransactions

Dusk Golem

A 21st Century Rockefeller







Thought this was worth a topic.

Thanks to lashman for pointing this out promptly.

TO BREAK IT DOWN:
-There is a $60 game known as Guitar Hero Live. The game has 42 songs on it, which is a margin of what other entries in the series previously provided. The selection can be found elsewhere.
-On top of this, previous Guitar Hero controllers will not work with a game, and a new controller costs $40, making the game a $100 entry level fee.
-There is a service known as Guitar Hero TV, on this a radio station-type channel deal plays songs which purchasers of the game can hop in to play whatever song is being streamed. Players can not own any song from the service, and can't select any song from the service, just what is being played via the streaming radio thing.
-There is a Karaoke-like system to 'rent' songs for a play, using Play Tokens. You can earn Play Tokens from the game by getting a level-up, scoring in the top 3 on GHTV for the day, or by play some of the base songs from the main game (the amount raises the more songs you've played, with 5 songs to earn a token as the minimum, 10 as the maximum). You can buy Play Tokens for $2.50 for 10 tokens.
-You can rent a song for 24-hours for $6.

The effort seems to be trying to mix a game and a service. It has all the markings of a game, with the price tag, controller, $100 entry fee, but then it also provides a service behind it, and the service acts like a radio/karaoke deal with microtransactions, and no way to own any of the songs outside of what's on the disk. To casually play songs via radio is fine, to play a song you want or to access it will either mean grinding songs to get another go at it or to buy tokens to buy a play or 24-hour session of what's currently on the play list.

^The above was all very unclear to me at least and many others in the topic apparently at first, until some fans and some PR people provided the full details in this topic. To how it tries to explain all of this in game is also currently unclear.

I still feel negatively on it, but others may feel differently. What do you all think?
 

SFenton

Member
We've known about this for a long time. It's not even that bad, really. You get to pick a song for every five-ten that you play. The better you are, the more coins you get. You're never locked out of the game, you're never forced to pay to play. It's a necessity that goes with the whole idea of "Guitar Hero Spotify".
 

Fracas

#fuckonami
I don't see the issue. It's basically Spotify mobile in that everything's on shuffle unless you have Premium.
 

Shauni

Member
The details on the microtransactions are in the OP now, but OP did misfire a little by not just waiting until all the tweets were out to actually make a thread
 
This is...nothing new to anyone who has been paying attention to the game. You earn plays that you can use to play specific songs by playing the random songs on GHTV or you can buy them outright but you don't own any of the music. As a casual player it's a way better cost option for me than buying songs individually like in Rock Band and from what we've heard they're not especially stingy with play tokens.
 

Killthee

helped a brotha out on multiple separate occasions!
So there's F2P style microtransations on top of the $60 base game but additional songs are free instead of paid for dlc?
 
If that's true, fuck that. I want to be able play the song whenever I want ie; rock band. Id rather pay for the song to play it forever, then pay to play 10 songs then pay again if I want to play that song again.
 

CloudWolf

Member
It's worth nothing that you can (and will) earn a ton of "Play Tokens" by playing GHTV without paying, though it's not clear if this will still be the case when the game has been out for longer.
 

5taquitos

Member
This is for Guitar Hero TV, not the regular game with the standard DLC, right? I thought the point of Guitar Hero TV was to just sort of jump into whatever's currently playing.

Not defending MTs at all, just curious if this affects the base game at all.
 
All I know is I was able to hop on and could play like 240 different songs through GHTV without having to pay per song like I would in Rock Band. Yeah I have to play some random stuff to unlock play tokens if I want to play specific songs but for a casual player this saves me a bunch of money.
 

ViciousDS

Banned
LOL........does the dude not realize you get the in game currency with complete ease by.......playing the game? You can spend $0 and play a ton of songs on demand by playing GHTV stuff. Glad to see its not clarified in the OP.


edit: this has also been known for months btw.....its not new
 

Falk

that puzzling face
a new form of Microtransactions

Regardless of how much it restricts what you can or cannot play in GHL under normal usage, pay per play with no permanent ownership is how many mobile music games have been monetizing since forever. So no, it's not something groundbreakingly new.

inb4 mobile gaming ruining console games

edit: Re-worded this a little better.
 

SFenton

Member
Some more clarification:

GHTV is free.
You never have to pay a dime if you don't want to.
You can, forever, just play whatever the service has on at the time. There will, presumably outside of the Avenged Sevenfold preorder bonus, never be a time where you cannot play a song.
If you want to pick a song to play, you either:
- Spend a token you have earned playing GHTV
- Spend real life money to acquire a token to pick a song.
You get tokens by:
- Playing the game, and you get more every day
- Playing a song
- Being better than other players at a song

What's the problem here? You're never locked out of GHTV. You're never forced to pay for anything. It's literally no worse than Spotify, Groove, Pandora, Apple Music. The game isn't based around a traditional DLC model anymore, it's based on music discovery services.

From day one you have over 250 songs to play, just for the entry cost of the game. I think there's some misconception over having to pay to play, when that is never the case.
 

jwk94

Member
I'm confused. Are songs not unlocked for players to have free access too right out the gate? Or is this the DLC element to the new GH?
 
LOL........does the dude not realize you get the in game currency with complete ease by.......playing the game? You can spend $0 and play a ton of songs on demand by playing GHTV stuff. Glad to see its not clarified in the OP.

So, it's a $100 Free2Play title?
 
This is for Guitar Hero TV, not the regular game with the standard DLC, right? I thought the point of Guitar Hero TV was to just sort of jump into whatever's currently playing.

Not defending MTs at all, just curious if this affects the base game at all.
As far as I can tell you from playing the game at Gamescom and talking to one of the devs and pr there.
They is no "regular DLC"

You have play single player / two player option of playing music from the disk.
And
You can play GH TV. where 100's of songs play all the time 24/7 in channels
Jump in at any time and play along online.

As far was I know that is how it works, but somethings might have changed.
 
LOL........does the dude not realize you get the in game currency with complete ease by.......playing the game? You can spend $0 and play a ton of songs on demand by playing GHTV stuff. Glad to see its not clarified in the OP.

Look mate people are trying to be outraged here can you take your facts and your reasonable attitude somewhere else?
 
I've no real issue with the way this is being done, GHTV sounds alright.
If I'm understanding it right, it's just music videos looping and I play them as they come up. If I want to play a particular song I pay so many tokens.
I earn the token through playing, the only problem I see is if they decide to balance the game after I've bought it and then the tokens become harder to get.
 
Wait, so you pay $60 for the game.. then have to use in game currency to play songs? If you want to get more game currency there's the option to use real money?

No free mode to play whatever??

EDIT: NVM SFenton cleared it up
 
Sounds like GHTV is an arcade/karaoke based system in addition to the base game.

They're likely setting up GHTV for being its' own standalone thing.

That's pretty normal.
 
As opposed to just getting the play tokens by playing the game?

And also top marks for ignoring the on-disc live portion that doesn't require play tokens to play.
 

TimmiT

Member
I think it's an interesting system. While it can be annoying that you can't just buy each song individually, this also means that you can play all of the DLC songs without paying for them with the in-game currency. Not sure if it's better or worse than the standard DLC model, really.

Wait, so you pay $60 for the game.. then have to use in game currency to play songs? If you want to get more game currency there's the option to use real money?

No free mode to play whatever??

There are two separate modes: the Live mode which has all of the songs you don't need to pay for and a GHTV mode where you can earn or buy tokens to play songs.
 

Quonny

Member
No problem with this.

You still have the base set list anytime. You can play the "stations" anytime. If you feel like playing a specific song that's not part of the offline mode, it's still an option if you have the currency, which is earned in game.

You also get dozens, if not hundreds, of new songs being pumped into the mix in the coming months and years.

Oh, and this was clearly explained months ago. They've been very upfront about it.

but keep bein' maddies
 
Some more clarification:

GHTV is free.
You never have to pay a dime if you don't want to.
You can, forever, just play whatever the service has on at the time. There will, presumably outside of the Avenged Sevenfold preorder bonus, never be a time where you cannot play a song.
If you want to pick a song to play, you either:
- Spend a token you have earned playing GHTV
- Spend real life money to acquire a token to pick a song.
You get tokens by:
- Playing the game, and you get more every day
- Playing a song
- Being better than other players at a song

What's the problem here? You're never locked out of GHTV. You're never forced to pay for anything. It's literally no worse than Spotify, Groove, Pandora, Apple Music. The game isn't based around a traditional DLC model anymore, it's based on music discovery services.

From day one you have over 250 songs to play, just for the entry cost of the game. I think there's some misconception over having to pay to play, when that is never the case.
Sounds completely fine but the gaming industry should stop for some reason.
 

bounchfx

Member
Is Spotify pushing the limits of greed as well?

from a consumer perspective however, spotify is actually a great value. and if you're trying to compare it here, spotify doesnt have a ~$100 buy in nor charge you extra if you wanna listen to the same song twice in a row without listening to something else in between.

not really a good comparison (from a consumer perspective)

that being said, I think it's an interesting system and I think it's easy to get carried away seeing the pricing without understanding how the ghtv system works
 

Acerac

Banned
Wait, so you pay $60 for the game.. then have to use in game currency to play songs? If you want to get more game currency there's the option to use real money?

No free mode to play whatever??

There's 42 songs you can play whenever, or you can play the random mode.

At least that's what I understand?
 
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