Gears of War 4 update increases match bonuses and lowers Elite Pack costs

The Coalition has made a change to Gears of War 4 that jacks up the "match completion" bonus earned in Versus Multiplayer action, and also decreases the cost of Elite Packs. The studio said the tweak was made as a result of "monitoring our data and hearing your feedback," which led it to conclude that "the rate at which credits are earned were under our own expectations—and yours." In Gears' card-based progression system, which includes skins for versus mode and ability upgrades for Horde mode, the Elite Pack offers five customization cards, with a guaranteed rare.

"Our Player Progression team have been working hard to address this as quickly as possible in order to improve the experience of acquiring Gear Packs. As of now, a new server-side update to credits is deployed in Gears of War 4," The Coalition explained on the Gears forums. "The goal of these new changes is to provide a more consistent reward per match for our players, and bring the time required to earn Gear Packs—including the customization focused Elite Pack—closer to our expectations."

Elite Packs now cost 3500 credits instead of 4000, while end-of-game bonuses, which are awarded whether you win or lose (although winning brings greater rewards), have gone up an unspecified amount. "This should provide a higher and more consistent credit earn rate across our modes, with the leveling milestone drops of 500 Credits and Credit bounties also helping you on your road to your next pack," The Coalition said.

The message also warns of a known bug that can cause post-match credit rewards to show up as 0. The credits will be properly rewarded, however, and should be properly reflected in your Credit Wallet. The bug will be fixed in a future update. Speaking of the future, our own Gears 4 review will be up shortly. For now, you can read more about what we've got cooking on that front in our Gears of War 4 review-in-progress.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.