Why's there lots of talks about microtransactions? Were there microtransactions in NFS Payback?
The mtx system in Payback was extremely disgusting, and very similiar to Battlefront 2 at launch.
Basically instead of just earning money to upgrade your car, you got speed cards at the end of each race which had random stats on it. You slotted in speed cards onto your car which then added the card stat to the car's base stat. That's how upgrading worked.
Races had a level requirement which was calculated from the car's base level and all the speed cards added on top of it. The AI was cheating like crazy if your level was lower than the recommended, so you often hit a wall where you needed to get better speed cards.
So how?
Well, you had to redo races. In a game that advertised itself as narrative driven, by the way. It's so stupid. But OK - redo races. Except, the problem was, the drop rate on good cards was terrible, so you would end up doing the same race several times before you get anything good from it.
And this is where mtx came in. You could earn loot boxes which contained speed points that you could gamble to get new cards. And you could of course buy loot boxes as well....
Eventually they adjusted the system to be a lot more generous with lootboxes and speed cards, and they also made the speed card shop refresh its inventory a lot quicker (it used to be like, every 30 mins) and the general inventory is a lot better too. But at launch, it was fucking disgusting.