Loot boxes and other topics

General Discussion
41

Loot boxes you pay real money for or keys for loot boxes you pay real money for, where there’s no info on the contents and no info on odds etc, that’s gambling.

Free loot boxes you don’t invest anything into other than time spent playing, is not gambling.

Wouldn’t really be counterproductive whatsoever. It would be the best incentive they could ever give to retain players, because right now, the game is struggling hard to retain players. The player base keeps spiking and that’s really the bottom line.

If they believe that releasing overpriced skins and bundles and mythic weapons will keep players wanting to keep playing when there are so many other underlaying issues such as a horrid matchmaker that looks like it’s been designed by someone fresh out of college, and horrible map designs and the new game mode hardly anyone wants to play and a rank progression system that punish players who ends up with leavers on their team and more, they would be wrong.

The dev team and its managers need to sit down and think long and hard about what they want and how to solve the issues that plague the game. Until they do, OW2 is gonna keep bleeding players, because right now there is literally zero incentives for new and old players to keep playing.

Yes, people bought them, but the majority were cash whales and kids do not have that amount of money available to spend on loot boxes.

Free daily loot boxes, free event loot boxes etc is not predatory.

42

No evidence supporting that the majority were cash whales at all. That’s just something folks like to tell themselves because then they can justify stuff like this existing.

Loot boxes were ‘extremely’ affordable. The absolute minimum you could spend on them was $5 and that type of cash was something most kids have access to these days.

The design of the boxes is literally predatory. This is not up for debate, that’s just a fact. Loot boxes use the exact same techniques as casino slot machines. They are designed, from the ground up, to separate your cash from your wallet. The ‘free’ ones you get are literally part of the predatory system. The first taste is free, after that, you need to pay if you want another dopamine fix.

43

Given that the current monetization model for the pay to win game being called OW2 is selling cosmetics from the shop, giving out lootboxes is counterproductive because each item in each lootbox is an item that the player could have bought…each is therefore a lost sale…which drops OWs revenue

Taking an action that reduces revenue is counterproductive

1 Like
44

This is how it goes most of the time.

Someone will get a set of free boxes and they’ll open those up hoping for a legendary skin they want (this is especially true during limited time events when skins are only available from specific types of loot boxes, or for a limited time) now maybe they get lucky and they get that skin, but 90% of the time they’re not that lucky.

They run out of boxes and then the game pops up and offers more in the shop. Just $5 for 5 boxes! Some folks, like yourself will shrug that off and go: “Nah, free boxes are fine, thanks.” but other people, especially children who don’t have a firmer grasp on what they’re doing or gambling addicts will instead go. “Well it’s only $5, I can afford that.” so they’ll pop in $5 and open those boxes…

And once again they don’t get what they want, so they pop down another $5, and another $5, the dopamine hit they get from loot box design and the ‘chance’ to get what they want driving them on because this time, this time they’ll get the skin! They just know it!

If they’re lucky and they can regain control over themselves they stop after spending more than they ever planned to spend, it’s a loss but it’s a recoverable loss and a lesson is taught. If they can’t? They find that they burn through way too much cash. Cash that was needed for more important things. Cash they can’t get back.

That’s what happened to my brothers kid. He used my brother’s credit card to buy multiple packs of cards in a FIFA game for their ultimate team mode. Each time he opened a pack hoping for a player he wanted, each time he got disappointed and spent more of my brothers money to buy more packs. He ended up being $400 worse off by the time my brother found out and cut off access to the card. His kid wasn’t doing it to be malicious, he wasn’t doing it because he wanted to spend that much, he just got sucked into a predatory system designed from the ground up to do exactly what it did.

And you can find multiple stories like my brothers out there. Of kids spending waaay too much money on loot boxes in games, putting their family in debt to the tune of hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars. That’s why multiple countries ruled that they are either illegal or they put legislation in place that restricts their use in some way. If it was harmless and non-predatory, no country would have acted against them.

Systems like that are not something Overwatch needs back, ever. The game is far better off without it.

45

Couldn’t agree more. It’s unfathomable for any live-service game to function without a proper reward system in the long run. Grinding is a huge motivation to make people come back to the game, to make them stop before ragequtting, to make them focus less on the fact that they are loosing and more on just trying their best. If something doesn’t changes Overwatch will slowly loose its audience.

I personally would give out 1 lootbox for every 4th BP level (on the free track only)
The lootboxes would only contain legacy cosmetics, with the old duplication avoidance system, and to reward veteran players that already have a lot of legacy cosmetics unlocked, duplicates would reward coins:
1 coin for common
25 coin for rare
50 coin for epic
and a 100 coin for legendary duplicates.

The main problem with this argument is that even the strictest countries like Belgium agree and specify in their laws that they only classify SOLD lootboxes as gambling.

Lootboxes that people could earn through time-investment is a completely fair way to reward people, and it SHOULD come back because the current coin and credits rewards makes it impossible for most players to unlock even half the cosmetics they want in THEIR LIFETIME. Unlocking all legacy cosmetics, that took in OW1 around 4-5 years, now takes 52 years. It’s an insane and unfair system.

2 Likes
46

Loot boxes are still 100% predatory even if they’re free.

They are designed that way, from the ground up. That design doesn’t change just because you removed the price tag. They’ll get dependant on those dopamine hits that they get from opening boxes and they’ll want more, and if the game they’re playing now won’t give it to them, they’ll play another game that will, because there will always be a game developer out there who will do whatever they can for a quick buck, and if that means turning people into gambling addicts, they’ll do it with no hestitation.

EA executives when pressured about it showed absolutely no remorse even when they were told how damaging their game systems were. They likened the boxes to ‘kinder eggs’ (which are chocolate eggs you buy with random toys inside) and saw no issue with kids spending money on their services, none, whatsoever.

47

The current system is more predatory, it preys on completionists that had 100% unlocked all cosmetics on their favorite hero to not have the self-control to not buy a new $40 skin when it drops because now they either buy it or their collection will forever be 99% complete because its impossible to earn enough ingame currency before the skin goes away to who know how long from the shop.

Rotating shops are designed on FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and its way more disgusting and predatory than a stable random chance loot system ever was.

If the game can’t function without one I’d go with the lesser of two evil: random loot

1 Like
48

You don’t seem to be able to comprehend what free means so let’s just leave it at that, yeah?

Case in Point

Free loot boxes doesn’t require any investment other than time. Nothing predatory about it whatsoever.

The only thing predatory about loot boxes are the loot boxes you have to buy where they have no info on contents or the odds of obtaining x item from them. That’s gambling and predatory, but the current cash shop is even more predatory and have the worst case of FOMO i have seen outside of Asian F2P MMORPG cash shops like Tower of Fantasy and Genshin Impact just to name a couple.

No, it’s not. Not when they’re free. The only fact here is that free loot boxes are not predatory.

2 Likes
49

No, it is not. Not by a long shot.

The shop tells you exactly what you will get and how much you need to spend to get it. The battle pass shows you exactly what is in it at every stage so you can decide if it’s worth it or not. Almost all of the skins for every hero can be purchased from the hero select screen, save for shop exclusive and battle pass skins (and even shop exclusive skins will rotate in and out).

You could try to argue that the prices are too high, but they’re actually tuned to the standard that was set by other companies and their games. MTX prices are in line with what we see in Apex Legends, Valorant and League of Legends for example.

And speaking of prices, while yes, with loot boxes you could eventually get something you wanted for free, for those who bought them (and I did on occasion) the average amount spent on loot boxes to get something decent was around $20. Only we didn’t spend that $20 on something we specifically wanted, no, we spent that $20 for the ‘chance’ to get what we wanted.

I literally explained why they’re predatory even if they’re free. You seem to have a problem with reading. Try again.

50

The only way you can get these new skins without paying $20 is to wait for them to show up on Twitch.

Also LOL the new system is less predatory. Get out with that shill nonsense. You could get almost anything by just playing with the loot box system. Go empty your bank some more into Blizzards account why don’t you.

3 Likes
51

there was nothing wrong with lootboxes,

some games still use lootboxes, nobody cares it’s lootboxes either.

And all of these games will continue to use lootboxes regardless, so there was no need for OW to give up lootboxes other than corporate greed shenanigans…

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52

It is less predatory, this is an indisputable fact.

With the shop, I can see exactly what items are available, how much they cost, and if there’s a bundle deal I can check to see exactly what is in the bundle and decide for myself if that’s worth the amount that Blizzard is asking for it. If it is and I like it, I can buy it, no fuss, no muss.

With loot boxes I can’t see what’s in them, I can’t guarantee that I’ll get the item I want. I’m essentially paying for the chance to get what I want, and if I spend $20 on loot boxes and get nothing but junk items that I’m never going to use, then I’ve effectively wasted $20.

The whole ‘but you could get them for free’ argument isn’t valid because most people paid for loot boxes in the first place. Why do I know this? Because Blizzard, very proudly, admitted that by 2019 Overwatch had generated $1 billion in revenue from loot boxes alone.

$1 billion.

To give you an idea of just how much money that is, if you were born tomorrow and you were given $500,000 a year, every year until you died at the age of 120, you’d only have $60 million dollars by the end of your life. Which isn’t even a tenth of the way to the $1000 million you’d need to finally reach the $1 billion mark. And how do you think they got all that money? By luring people in to spending money on loot boxes again, and again, and again.

Loot boxes are designed to be predatory. This has been proven time and time again. They use the exact same techniques employed by casino slot machines. Even the free boxes you get are part of that system. It follows the predatory mantra of ‘The first taste is free’. The idea behind it being that they lure you in with free stuff, then once they’ve got you hooked, they make you pay to keep getting that dopamine fix that the loot boxes give you every time you open one.

53

Considering the fact I literally didn’t even know this Concord game existed until this very second? Yeah, whoever was in charge of marketing really dropped the ball hard on their own foot.

I’m not saying that I’m anyone important who knows anything, but typically, most people will hear about a game at least once before it hits the playable portion of its life cycle. I’ve literally not heard anything about this game.

1 Like
54

Ah yes, because the current system makes them so much more money…

Oh wait, no, it doesn’t. If they wanted to be greedy, they’d still have loot boxes.

55

I feel like the issue of lootboxes wouldn’t be bad if you were given random loot for every “level” you did in Overwatch, this time with the exception that you cannot buy lootboxes.

It would just a be a fun little reward with RNG, much like Rainbow 6’s system if I recall (Unless they have changed this; ubisoft tends to be more greedy these days)

56

in countries that ban cases cs2 is forced to show the content on the case before opening.That’s how they avoided the ban.
you need to buy an xray vission thingy (forgot the name). It costs 2$ and yes you need to buy it before you can open cases. Then it will scan the case and reveal the prize before you open it.
as an fyi the content in the case is predetermined every time. You don’t “spin the weel” and hope for something better, it’s all fake.From the moment you bought the case the content was already chosen.

57

Game industry didn’t. Law makers did

Then being gambling, plus they make less money than the shop, plus they give the consumer less choice and sentience over what they have…

It’s a no brainer to go for the shop.

It’s no different to your local grocery store.

They have product
They set price
If it sells well, price probably goes up.
If it doesn’t sell, price probably goes down.

So if he OW shop isn’t changing prices, or is increasing, the the likelyhood is that they are in demand.

As with nearly everything. The only real way to force change is boycotting. But you try convincing the mercy one trick they shouldn’t be buying that shiny new skin…

2 Likes
58

I don’t have a problem reading. You just have a comprehension issue.

59

it’s funny how wrong you are, with the old lootbox system, I could essentially get any skin I want,

99% of the skins released in OW1 I could buy for 0$, just because I had in game currency from duplicates,

that 1% remaining are OWL skins.

New shop needs special OW coins, former OW coins are Legacy Coins,

you gather those considerably slower,

you can have several Legendary and Epic skins for each hero in lootbox system, vs like 1-2-3 skins for just one or two heroes until you run out of F2P coins.

The shop makes them more money.

in R6 you both get packs and can buy them, some thing are purchasable outside packs, like elite skins,

you also don’t always have the choice to purchase skin directly and have to gamble it through packs, though one of the fairer compensations for that is that these exclusive packs don’t give duplicates.

60

Eh more like governments saw it as gambling and their outright banned, and or haev legal push back in threat of regulating the whole industry in the US side of things. I’m pretty sure china is outright banned at the moment.