Those of you who play Halo 5: Guardians will be familiar with the REQ card system. And it turns out that a similar system is going to be used in Gears of War 4.
Everything you do in Gears of War 4's online multiplayer modes, whether it be Horde or Versus, earns you Credits. The better you do: the more Credits you'll earn. If you complete Bounties you'll get even more Credits towards your next Gear Pack.
Gear Packs are the primary way to acquire what The Coalition simply enough just calls Cards. Each pack contains a number of cards, usually randomised, that provide you with a variety of unlocks based on the theme of the Gear Pack. These can be purchased for Credits, by reaching certain milestones, or purchased with real world currency.
Simply put, Cards are the new way to unlock new customisation content in Gears of War 4. There are Cards that will give you more player customisation options, equipment and abilities for Horde mode, and Bounties that task players with completing challenges for added rewards. Fear not Versus players, no cards have any gameplay impact for Versus.
Cards unlock items, and are graded (ranging from Common to Legendary) based on the rarity of finding the content in Gear Packs. They've given us more detailed information about some of the Cards:
• Characters - A character that can be used in Horde or Versus. These include completely new characters and special customised versions of other characters.
• Weapon Skins - Stand out from the crowd by customising your weapons. Each weapon skin card unlocks a skin for a particular weapon. You can now, for the first time in Gears of War history, customise Power Weapons to change their look when acquired from a spawn point on the battlefield.
• Emblems - Customise your player identity in Gears of War 4. Emblems show behind your username in lobbies and scoreboards.
• Bounties - Versus and Horde Bounties provide challenges, such as getting seven kills in a single match of Team Deathmatch, and provide XP or Credit rewards upon completion. Bounties are only consumed after completion, so you can attempt them as many times as you want.
If you don't like a certain Card, you can destroy it for Scrap; a second in-game currency only acquired through destroying Cards. Got a weapon skin for your Lancer that isn't quite your style? Feel free to destroy it and gain some Scrap towards a Lancer skin that's more to your liking.
Using Scrap, you can create almost any card found in the game. The amount of Scrap earned for destroying a Card is determined by its rarity, as is the amount of Scrap it costs to create a new one.
It seems that Microsoft is quite pleased with the implementation of REQ cards in Halo 5: Guardians, and wants to use similar systems in some of their other franchises as well. As long as they keep implementing them in this way we're not complaining. What do you think?
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