GTA 6: 8 Current Gaming Trends Rockstar Must AVOID
5. "Free" In-Game Items That Take Years To Unlock
Speaking of monetisation, many games come with the general sentiment of "Everything is free, it just takes time!"
However, that grinning face of corporate gaming comes with a caveat: The time it usually takes to grind out enough currency to unlock whichever top-tier item you're after, can take MONTHS-worth of play. Ubisoft's For Honor came under fire for this across its first few months, as fans realised it would take 2.5 years worth of time to get everything, or you could cough up $732 in microtransactions to unlock all that gear in one go.
Either way, it was a raw deal.
Devil May Cry 5 too - despite being a phenomenal game in every other respect - has dance emotes locked behind a currency count of a few million, which just happens to be the thing you can pay real money for too. As you're only getting tens of thousands every couple of missions, you're heavily incentivised to just cough up the cash if you want that final reward.
Back to GTA, and Rockstar employ this practice entirely with their Shark Cards. Yes, "everything is free" if you have enough time, and I understand so much content being plugged into the game with no price point is a massive positive, but balancing this stuff out so the devs get paid and the consumer doesn't feel exploited, is a VERY hard thing to get right.
One that Rockstar, arguably, haven't.