When people (rightfully) complain about Hearthstone loot boxes and the type of reward system that forces you to either pay or grind to get certain rewards, it was not Blizzard, Activision or EA that made it mainstream on PC, it was Valve.
Valve introduced this whole model with TF2, where they realized they could make way more money from their game beyond the initial purchase, and even subscription, if they milked players through loot box “crates”.
At least some of that anger should be directed at them. Blizzard is just following the shady practices of Valve.
In a way gaming is often more shady than drug sellers. Plenty of games now add microtransactions, season passes, and all sort of other baloney, post-launch. It avoids bad reviews and it allows you to get players into your game before sprining the shady deals on them.
It’s as if a regular restaurant doesn’t disclose its actual plans and pretends to be just another restaurant, but gradually starts putting cocaìne into their dishes without telling its customers.
Addiction is addiction. Granted, some addictions are worse than others, but gaming is definitely not as bad as drugs.
There are certain areas where gambling is advertized to kids - that’s a no-no. But if we’re adults, we have to assume responsibility for our share of our problems.
50-50 is the way to go, otherwise you have a paradox of morality.
If you make someone take 100% of the blame for your downfall, then it’s only fair that others do the same, which means that whoever does something bad can actually blame it on external forces and avoid responsiblity for their actions.
You have to accept your 50% of everything, otherwise you are a hypocrite, and a danger to yourself and others.
If you replace “definitely” with “usually” then I’d agree. But I did a lot of drugs in my misspent youth and I can tell you from direct experience that there are people with video game addiction that is worse than some other people’s hard drug addiction. It varies from person to person.
Every game developer has some type of micro transaction strategy worked into their games. Every game has some type of battlepass, seasonal pass, loot box system in place.
We are not forced to play the game, it’s a choice we make. Why get mad at a game developer for utilizing a strategy that is going to make it sustainable for them to continue to support their game as they fit and bring new content to it?
It is a business after all. I feel like a lot of players forget that.
Sometimes they make some unpopular decisions like what they recently did with the Weeklies, but at least they acknowledged that it wasn’t the best move and are taking steps to address it.
However, what I will say is their support team is pretty bad, it would be nice if they found a way to actually offer support rather than hire a bunch employees that don’t read what you write half the time and give you a response that is not even related to what the ticket was about.
How about We deal with the 50 that is providing the substances first?
I don’t pay to play this game. I haven’t in years.
But I suppose it’s fair to say I am masochist enough that I am still here.
Loot boxes are gambling in it’s most rudimentary form, but in HS?
I don’t think there is much advantage to be had, but perhaps for new players without collections.
Another one will just replace them because there’s money to be made. You’re not thinking clearly. Sure, you can keep replacing them but as long as there is demand, there will be supply, and the demand is YOUR 50% of responsibility.
Well; like I said: I don’t pay to play this game, nor will I, unless it changes dramatically.
But, I was a gambling addict for years, and thereby know what it is to be a targeted demographic.
as someone with a lot of members in my family who are actively addicted to drugs, there’s a variety of things more than just “drug sellers make money and exploit innocent people who don’t know any better.”
I mean this is a card game, and card game have always been lootboxy (packs). So I don’t blame HS at all for that bit. Whether card pack as a concept is a type of gambling and bad can be its own discussion, but even if you think they are, HS is not the primary party to go after.
The thing that is different is that for physical cards, extra/duplicate retain value a lot better, at least for higher rarity cards. You usually only take at most a 20-30% hit for higher rarety cards in exchange/resales. Although lower rarity might be like 90+% hit, but it’s also almost trivial to get a full set.
HS’s -75% or worse on all cards is where it gets questionable by comparison, the cost of converting one high rarity card to another is excessive. So all that I would want is better dust rate for epics and legendaries.
While yes Valve started the lootbox “trend” what they did right compared to blizzard was they didn’t REMOVE the lootboxes halfway down the line, in a failed attempt to sell to countries that don’t like gambling like Europe. Why do we not sell games to them again? Oh yeah because their favorite game is Eurotruck Driving Sim 2019. The moment they got rid of the boxes was the day Overwatch, Brawlstars, and even Smite died.