One of the most anticipated games of early 2018 has to be Ubisoft’s next entry in the Far Cry series, Far Cry 5. With the series known for its bombastic fights, wildlife, and exotic locales, with the fifth entry, Ubisoft decided to change things up a bit and set it in the fictional Montana setting of Hope County in the United States.
Monetization Report isn’t here to look at all of those things. To find out how the game plays out, check out our Far Cry 5 review, but if you want to find out about monetization of the game, this is the place. We break down the purchase prices, DLC, microtransactions, impact on play, and other elements so you know what you’re getting into.
Purchase
Far Cry 5 is a premium AAA product from Ubisoft, which means you’re looking at a $60 price tag. Beyond that, Far Cry 5 also has several different editions, which comes with the territory these days.At $70, you can get the Deluxe Edition, which comes with the Deluxe Pack. In it, you get a .44 Magnum and an AR-C Assault Rifle each with a unique skin, the Ace Pilot Pack (gun skin, helicopter, Aerial Force outfit), and finally the Big Game Hunter Pack (bow, ATV, Big Game Hunter Outfit). There are also some consumables that you get with it: an explosives pack (4 each of dynamite, C4, grenades, and proximity mines), and a chaos pack (4 each of furious buff, fast buff, Molotov cocktails, and animal bait).
At $90 there is the Gold Edition, which adds the Season Pass (see more below) in addition to the Deluxe Pack, and a bonus MBP Sniper Rifle, which they label as "day 1 exclusive."
Much like the Far Cry 5 microtransaction system, these offer some early unlocks for the player potentially, as well as cosmetic options. The consumables are a minor aspect - all of the items there are craftable aside from animal bait and common to come across.
Beyond that, there were various collector’s editions (that appear to be sold out everywhere now), which had physical goodies, and the Doomsday Prepper’s preorder bonus, which had an outfit, a weapon skin, and some consumables.
Far Cry 5 Season Pass
As basically every AAA game does these days, Far Cry 5 has a Season Pass for its DLC offerings. The season pass comes as part of the Gold Edition or can be purchased separately for $30, and as we’ve previously covered has three separate DLCs announced along with an edition of Far Cry 3.Here’s a quick rundown of the DLC:
- Hours of Darkness – Take part in a Vietnam war story when Hope County resident Wendell Redler recounts the tale of when he was trapped behind enemy lines working to take down the Viet-Cong
- Dead Living Zombies – fight against hordes of zombies in seven B-movie scenarios
- Lost on Mars – Protect Earth by stopping the Martian Arachnid invasion on the Red planet itself and then set up to come home.
The part of the season pass that has caused some confusion is Far Cry 3 Classic Edition and what exactly that entails. For PC owners, they will not get Classic Edition, instead they will get a full copy of Far Cry 3 sometime after console owners have received Far Cry 3 Classic Edition.
As for Far Cry 3 Classic Edition, it is a compilation of all the single-player Far Cry 3 material without any of the co-op or multiplayer offerings for Xbox One and PlayStation 4. It features updated visuals, which Ubisoft has compared to the PC high settings. Lastly, players who received the Season Pass will be able to play it four weeks before Far Cry 3 Classic Edition is released sometime this summer.
Far Cry 5 Microtransactions
Far Cry 5 uses a dual currency system. Money is the primary in-game currency, while Silver Bars are the premium currency. You cannot directly buy money, but Silver Bars are purchasable at a rate equivalent to $1 = 100 Bars. There is no loot-box system in the Far Cry 5 microtransaction system; instead, Ubisoft opted for direct purchase via premium currency with an optional high priced purchase via the primary currency. What you can buy in the store are special versions (called 'prestige') of items, vehicles with skins already applied, or clothes to alter your character's appearance.There is an element of time-saving here as well, as you can use silver bars to buy items that you wouldn’t normally unlock until later in the campaign. Unlocks in Far Cry 5 are handled based on your resistance points, as more options become available the more you do things that advance your cause against the cult in-game. This is a methodical ramp that this premium currency disrupts to some degree.
It also isn't something that you'll be able to avoid in-game completely. All stores have the premium items for sale, and the only way to use money instead of silver bars is to go to a shop and purchase it there. The premium shop lacks this option, and in fact doesn't show that it is possible to buy with money, even at largely inflated rates. This is likely to be the most controversial element of the system in many ways because it means that even if you stay away from the cash shop, it doesn't stay away from you as every store owner is accepting premium currency for those items. The conversion rate here is 100 SB to 1800 cash—a 500 SB item, for example, will cost 9200 Cash.
Based on what we can tell, items fall into a tier system on price. Weapons and Vehicles cost 200, 400, or 500 Silver Bars depending on the particular item. Clothing outfits (of multiple pieces) fall into the same system, while individual pieces of clothing that are in the "prestige" group range between 50 and 200.
On the other hand, Silver Bars are possible to find in-game. Each of the roughly 20 cult outposts in Far Cry 5 will have some Silver Bars, typically in an out of the way safe that you may need to do some looking around for. Beyond that, there are Silver Bars in various locations around Hope County that one can find.
This doesn’t appear to significantly impact multiplayer or arcade play, though. Generally, those games use loadouts set by the creator and thus aren’t restricted by what you have or have not unlocked in single-player. This also avoids the issue of people having different amounts of weapon slots or weapons available to them based on single-player progression.
You do earn money at a reasonable rate in Far Cry 5, although how that is perceived obviously varies from person to person. There are ways to help boost that some, beyond grinding for it through hunting and the like. One neat thing is that Far Cry 5's co-op will let you keep what money and items you earn in other players' games back in your own (as well as levels, but not tracking world advancement like quests). Another point is that when you level you get some money, and you can get experience rewards for playing in the Far Cry 5 arcade. You can even double up, if you're willing to take a chance on randomly getting whatever game is tossed at you.
Far Cry 5 Microtransaction Prices
Here are the official purchase groups for Silver Bars (all prices in USD):
$5 = 500 Silver Bars
$10 = 1,050 Silver Bars (1,000 Silver Bars + 50 “bonus”)
$20 = 2,400 Silver Bars (2,000 Silver Bars + 400 “bonus”)
$35 = 4,650 Silver Bars (3,500 Silver Bars + 1,150 “bonus”)
$50 = 7,250 Silver Bars (5,000 Silver Bars + 2,250 “bonus”)
Monetization Report is a new series on TechRaptor that aims to provide consumers with the best information on how a game is monetized so that they know what to expect when playing it. It is done with either first hand experience playing the game or in conjunction with someone who has does so, in this case with our reviewer and review editor.