The wait is over, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain has released and we all get a chance to finally play it. For those who haven’t yet purchased it, the question of in-game microtransactions may still be a factor. Understanding what a game will try to sell you, what it will do for your experience, and what sorts of prices you’ll be charged if you decide to indulge therein are all primary concerns for many purchasers. Luckily, Konami has kept things relatively simple in Phantom Pain.
Players report back to a hub between outings and missions known as the Mother Base. In one of the multiplayer modes, a one-on-one variant called Forward Operating Base, players will be able to use a special currency to upgrade their little extension of the Mother Base. In the words of Polygon, who quote Konami, “that base is an optional, online version of Mother Base — they can only be built if you’re playing online — and establishing a FOB ‘will complement Mother Base by funneling increased profit, resources and manpower to Diamond Dogs,’ your private army.”
Building the base is free, but upgrading, improving, and expanding it will cost players a special kind of currency, called Mother Base Coins. MB Coins will be awarded to players in intentional scarcity via daily challenges and similar reward systems, but can be purchased en masse using real money. While prices worldwide are still unconfirmed, Metal Gear Network recently published screenshots of the in-game MB Coin store, seen below, but the prices listed therein were later revealed to be from New Zealand.
and while prices remain unclear, the sales model is very straightforward. Like other recent games with in-game transactions, such as Fallout Shelter, Konami has gone the route of the consolidated in-game store, where only one or two items are actually purchasable, but they reward the player in multiple ways thanks to creative design. For example, Fallout Shelter‘s lunchboxes are one of two things purchasable, and they have a chance to grant the player random amounts of items, resources, and even more vault dwellers. Similarly, MB Coins will grant players various valuable resources via the FOB.
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain launched at midnight last night for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.