Some people say Loot boxes prey on people and some say Loot Boxes don’t.
In the Mr. Finch video about Operant Conditioning.
I link to the part they talk about RNG.
“The idea is the most habit forming is when you can’t predict when you get a good prize or the value of the prize.”
Does this sound like WoW Raiding?
I didn’t think there was so much psychology to playing video games when I was younger. Now that I am older, I thought I enjoyed the game for the RNG and not being handed everything I wanted. It appears I was fooled by Operate Conditioning.
Bosses are just loot boxes that you have to kill first and fight with 39 other people over the loot of.
The thing is that this sort of psychology isn’t inherently bad to have in a video game, when used correctly. Diablo 2 for example is built almost entirely on RNG loot, and it’s still a great game because it knows how to use it well.
One can argue that loot boxes often use it for the sake of making more money in the way of micro-transactions and as a result, could be called predatory.
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I would argue that wow bosses are not the same because they are guaranteed a set number of prices AND the loot is not yours and yours alone. It is shared with the entire raid.
You could argue that the modern personal loot system is a lootbox, but definitely not a master loot boss.
This.
The issue isn’t with the addictive psychology behind RNG loot. The issue is when this drive is monetized. Diablo 2, and to a lesser extent WoW certainly use the same attraction as loot boxes, but there’s no microtransactions to enable a true “slot machine” mentality. Both Diablo (single purchase) and WoW (single purchase & subscription) have monetization completely removed from the RNG loot mechanics. Sure in WoW’s case there’s an argument to be made that oppressively low chances increase the odds of a player buying another month, but this is nowhere near as predatory as loot boxes.
Personally I don’t think it affects everyone the same. Some people are so coaxed by Skinner’s Box conditioning that they play like a drug-user hunting for a fix. Other people play because of the entertainment value and accept loot when it drops but don’t feel some drive to try again if it doesn’t.
Take the Loot Boxes in HotS. Personally, I could take them or leave them. They’re not what I play for. The rewards in them, at best, get a reaction of “oh neat, I’ll use this mount/skin” and, at worst, I didn’t even look at or notice what they were. They’re irrelevant. Yet there are enough people out there willing to spend REAL currency toward additional rolls hoping for a better outcome.
Similarly, when it came to playing vanilla (and BC), while there were bosses with loot I wanted (I’m looking at your mace, Heroic Murmur), I didn’t log into WOW and play because I was seeking that fix. I didn’t even grind that particular dungeon so much as was happily available any time a group needed a healer for it.
By the time I quit WOW in early MoP, I could too easily feel what I described as new developers with their Psych 101 and Psych in Gaming degrees. It felt nothing like vanilla, a game designed by people who LOVED Warcraft and wanted to make a world to play in and experience it fully.
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Because my husband was in the Navy, we moved a lot. Whenever we lived in a state that prohibited gambling (my husband makes a lot of money playing Texas hold’em), he would make a big scene whenever we’d leave an establishment that had one of those drop-claw games. He’d tell me over and over again how they should also be illegal since you’re not guaranteed a win.
killing a boss in vanilla WoW is like getting a free loot box distributed across the entire raid
but if loot boxes were added, you could skip the raiding process and just buy loot boxes over and over again, taking out the middleman of raiding… and making blizzard a whole lot of money in the process, which would also make Classic WoW be a pay to win game, even moreso than WoW tokens would make it be
loot boxes were a mistake, and would be a very bad idea, and are a cancer upon the gaming industry
and WoW tokens were a mistake too
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