I genuinely do not understand people's knee jerk reaction to any and all lootbox models.
I understand concerns if the game is built around incentivizing you to p2w. I also agree that it'd be best if there was some in-game marketplace of sorts to trade duplicates of whatever you have.
But these days, it's just seems like everyone loses their shit at the moment loot boxes or a f2p model are even hinted at. Where was this outrage during capsule machines and trading cards?
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>pay $40 up front for a game
this is fine
>pay $20 to unlock the full game
this is fine
>optional DLC in micro-transaction amounts to supplement the game
ok
>pay money to get random assortment of items I need to play the game and there's a very high chance I won't get the items I want unless I spend money in the double digits
FUCK YOU
I'm so glad the japanese government is cracking down on skinner box garbage like gachas.
>Game is free, cosmetics are gatcha
Problem?
>Where was this outrage during capsule machines and trading cards?
These are physical objects with SOME intrinsic value which you can own or resell them to recoup your loss. You can do no such thing with digital goods outside of supported games on Steam. It might be different if system-wide inventory systems and secondhand markets were commonplace for digital goods.
you can trade, sell, and buy trading cards. it's not like your only option is buying pack after pack to get that one rare card you desire
Ok, so if the game offers the ability to trade digital items will people, as well as means exchanging digital items for their physical equivalent, like say trading cards, free of charge, it's all ok then?
that's not even remotely practical and you know it
virtual games shouldn't be employing booster pack business models when they have none of the benefits of a trading card game
it's basically extortion
not really since you're still preying on the addictive qualities of gambling.
Cosmetics are just the entry level drug. More games are already selling actual gameplay changes in gatcha because they already normalized paying for re-coloured skins
Then what makes trading cards ok?
Is it? Printing costs are cheap, and if you have set locations where you can exchange these, the it's doable. People are only ever gonna trade rare items anyway.
That's other companies. Not all games operate the same way. Some games even, can't. If the game only offers cosmetics, what's the issue?
It's why I cant play pic related...I love the shit out of it but goddamn
I was ok with certain Eidolons being "rare" and costumes costing money but once they started doing shit like making mounts give you stat bonuses and tying the bonus to a "lootbox" roulette system I fucking gave up.
trading cards are just little floppy pieces of cardboard. they're not loud cosmetics you can tout to 23 other players around the world at once. their drive as status symbols is very limited compared to modern video games.
You dont own anything with lootboxes.
Ever heard of Black Lotus in MtG?
yes and
>Then what makes trading cards ok?
Its getting annoying to explain this on a daily basis to people that are either too ignorant or too dumb to figure it out.
>Lootbox
>Advertise a special item in the lootbox.
>That special item is the only thing that's wanted
>Get random boosters and worthless shit from 99% of the boxes.
>Trading/Collectible cards
>Advertised for trading/collectible cards
>Get trading/collectible cards from them
For the trading card analogy to work, you'd have to buy a pack of trading cards, open it up, and get a random business card, a cupon for an unrelated product, a used condom, and a "chance" of obtaining a trading card. That's the only way they would be the same as collectible cards.
Not to mention trading card packs tell you the exact content of the box (eg. 1 rare, 2 uncommons, 6 commons) And you don't have to pay $60 to buy a right to buy a trading card pack, and you do not have their use restricted to one place which the card developer may decide to turn off at any time.
Digital goods are not physical goods, a lootbox is not the same thing as a pack of cards. You pseudo-intellectuals really need a new false equivalence to cling to because this one is really getting worn out.
In b4 "you said". This is my first post in this thread and I don't give a fuck what anyone else told you.
>Ever heard of Black Lotus in MtG?
Black lotus is not legal in any play, its a coveted collector's item that is valued at $30,000.
>Ever heard of Black Lotus in MtG?
Yes, its a misprint which caused a recall but about six copies managed to get out. valued at aroud $27000 it is not useable in any official MTG competition and nobody actually plays one due to its high value and rarity.
Are you telling me there is a cosmetic item in a videogame that was placed in a lootbox by accident, then removed from the lootpool after only a couple people obtained one, rendered unuseable in the game by the developers and then publicly sold for tens of thousands of dollars? I'm failing to see where you're drawing your comparison.
And you're telling me that's not a status symbol?
>And you're telling me that's not a status symbol?
That is exactly what I'm telling you. Nobody plays a black lotus you fuck.
>sell a chance to get a physical product
vs
>sell a chance to get information
Not gambling, legal stuff is complicated as fuck due to jews but it should still be regulated to hell and back.
You see a lot of people running around with their black lotus hanging on their neck?
Not that guy but that's not analogous at all you fucked up.
Black lotus is playable in vintage
was meant for
That's like saying owning all the gold in fort knox is a status symbol. It's not a sports car, you can't just go up to people and be like "check THIS out".
But that's exactly what people do.
Yes it is indeed, but that doesn't fit their flawed logic.
>Black lotus is playable in vintage
Why lie on the internet? You had to know I was going to know you're wrong and had a way of proving it.
magic.wizards.com
do not false flag "please"
It clearly says restricted there you fucktard
>Chaos orb
The reason that thing is banned is still one of my favorite MTG stories
It's because loot boxes are becoming more and more prevalent. Don't like loot boxes? Play a game that doesn't have them... oh they are infecting every game. With more being infected all the time. It's a cancer that;s spreading
That sounds like a slippery slope fallacy to me user.
Plenty of games exist without lootboxes, and in addition, in traditional games, where collectible card games were introduced decades ago, games without booster packs are still made and sold to this day.
why was it banned?
This, not to mention with trading cards you have the option of buy single cards individually without gambling.
The card reads that you toss it from a certain distance above the playing field and whatever it touches once it lands is destroyed....well somebody in the finals of an old game got the crazy idea to shred his into tiny pieces and sprinkle them over his opponent's entire board. Suffice to say he completely wiped him out and won because of it. It was banned shortly after
Later in the joke set Unglued, a parody of the card called "Chaos Confetti" was made to commemorate that moment
Ok, so if this option is added through some marketplace, is it ok?
It depends on the game i guess.
MTG has no buy to start cost, other than whatever decks you first buy. Also with real cards you have the option to sell them for real money at any point.
Orb was banned along with Falling Star because it requires physical actions that are a pain in the ass to adjudicate properly. Although I've always hoped that the Orb story was based on a real event.
I'm pretty sure it costs to start. At least if you wanna play at your LGS.
You can't play standard with a free starter deck. And you won't be able to play modern with one either as you won't last long enough to make any moves to the point where you can be considered "playing."
If you wanna play MtG, you're gonna have to drop some money, no matter what. If you wanna LEARN how to play, yeah, that's free.
But then, how is that different from the standard model for just about any competitive f2p game? In fact, f2p games make it even more generous, as you can actually play competitively for free. It's possible to rank high in LoL without ever paying a cent. MtG? Not a chance.
The free decks they give you are standard legal but you wont be winning anything
The biggest point is the resale thing. Idk of any games that let me turn in my assets into cash without taking a chunk of it as a fee.
Are they standard legal? I never knew. I knew they were shit from years of playing YuGiOh, so I didn't bother.
Point being, in MtG, you're forced to drop money if you wanna properly enjoy the game.
In SOME f2p games, you can literally be competitive, and unlock everything without ever paying any money.
To me, that's a fair model.
So long as this doesn't interfere with game balance, I'd say it's totally fair.
You won't be able to sell the majority of Magic cards you pull, as most commons are literally worth pennies. Only the rares, and those fluctuate in price.
Again, if a game offered a marketplace where you can sell and trade stuff in addition to a gatcha/lootbox system, would there be an issue?
Valve does this with dota 2 and csgo btw
I've played such a game and all that ended up happening was the "whalers" ended up rich as fuck and the economy went to straight dogshit. People who payed for massive amounts of lootboxes inflated the price of everything to obscene levels to the point where it wasn't possible to play the game without doing the same thing.
Then it's simple.
Content that affects game balance, straight up isn't available in gatcha, you have to pay for it.
What's in gatcha is cosmetics and other similar stuff, as well as a ballot you can exchange for the paid stuff. Now whalers can't tank the economy as they only hold cosmetics which don't affect gameplay. People who just wanna play the game can totally ignore that. But if you're someone who REALLY REALLY wants that rare skin, you either gotta roll for it, or find someone willing to either trade or sell it to you.
>in MtG, you're forced to drop money if you wanna properly enjoy the game.
Play draft format.
Draft costs money
>Pay 60 dollars for game
>Need to pay an additional who knows how much to gamble for cosmetics
>Not even guaranteed to get what I want
Yeah, I wonder why people don't like it.
Sorry, I thought when you were saying "it takes money to play m:tg" I thought you meant "it takes more money than a basic buy in cost". My bad.
Even if you set aside the fact that capsule machines, trading cards, and DLC are all bullshit, there's the fact that lootboxes make the total amount you're paying for an item vague and variable. When you pay for a lootbox or gacha item you don't want, you're basically adding to the sum of what you're going to pay for the item you're actually trying to buy. Plus, it creates a lot of variability in what one person pays for an item vs another person if the RNG is shitty.
Because it's NOT FUCKING FUN. You want to know what's fun? Unlocking shit by completing challenges and leveling up, not hoping your once a level loot box will give you what you want. It's fucking disgusting, video games are supposed to be thing people play to have fun and relax, adding in a luck factor, even if only for cosmetic shit, is fucking shit and boring.
>everyone loses their shit at the moment loot boxes or a f2p model are even hinted at
>People tend to get angry in the DLC ridden world of games now that they don't even get the DLC, just a chance to win it in a gamble
>You already blew 60 buck upfront then close to 40 for the season pass on top of paying to be online for consoles
>A another player could be better than you based purely on blind luck that they got the right item in a lootbox
>Company has complete control over the odds of you winning certain items and can change the ratio if they felt like it
>The game is usually created so playing to unlock stuff takes way too long so you're going to have to pay up to get anywhere
>So you're stuck getting your wallet raped or grinding forever in boring areas
Only EA were dumb enough to have a $60 game with a $40 season pass and pay2win lootboxes
Read the OP again. What's wrong with gatcha/lootboxes in a f2p model?
If you drop $60 for a game, and half the content is locked behind gatcha, AND the game is designed to force you to drop money on that, then yes, that's shitty.
But that's more of an issue of greedy implementation, than the lootboxes/gatcha themselves. There's definitely a way you can do this that's engaging and fair to the player.
Especially if you do stuff like show the odds of different items, give one free roll a day, give out free currency from time to time, give out some of the content out for free during events and competitions, like say, a reward list. Top 100 players X event, get all this rare shit, 200-500 get less, etc...
If you're generous with what you give out, and create ways to incentivize player engagement, this sort if model can be a great way to create a more dynamic experience for people. Because you create rare, coveted items, that you give people a chance to get entirely for free if they 'git gud.' That can be a powerful motivating factor.
Rather than being "you need X item that costs money" to be good at this game. You can make it, "you can only get good through your own skill, but if you do, you earn a chance of getting this really rare abd valuable cosmetic thing completely for free, but you're gonna have to fight other players for it."
Combine that with a game that's actually fun, and that's a winning formula.
The problem is that in videogames they are paying far more attention at finding ways to convince you to pay for loot boxes rather than playing the game itself.
It creates garbage.
That and its offers nothing for the player, just another wall and more cash to spend that only benefits the publisher because they just wanted more money for nothing.
They are just now a trigger word, thats how bad EA fucked it, they made a lootbox system so bad, it fucked up the very word and concept.
This is fair, but again, this comes down to greed and shitty design than the lootboxes themselves.
Wouldn't it be more fair to look at things on a case by case basis than to just have a knee-jerk reaction to all f2p models with lootboxes?
I agree, a full priced game has no business creating a lootbox system. But it can be very useful for f2p models. Especially indie games aiming to be competitive multiplayer games. They cant afford the marketing budgets necessary to create healthy player bases, thus f2p is the best way for them to create high quality games. You create games with iterative design, again, citing LoL as the best example.
If a game that costs $60 has microtransactions on top of it is because the developer is greedy, and if it's free, they are going to double down on their attempts to make you pay for microtransactions because that's their only revenue.
>thus f2p is the best way for them to create high quality games
F2P never results in quality games, they all end up being subpar trash at the level of $10 at launch shovelware.
i dont like it because it causes the game to become infested by asians
i would refund pubg if i could, it wasnt always this bad, but now i cant find anything but these fucking god damn gooks in NA servers
I think the biggest problem is that a lot of us just aren't fucking ok with gambling. If I'm spending my hard earned money on something I want it to be transparent. I don't mind LoL's model because despite the game's flaws if you spend riot points on something 99% of the time you know what it is you're getting
>I understand concerns if the game is built around incentivizing you to p2w.
That is naturally going to be the intent of the designers though. A game that includes lootboxes will design its gameplay loop from the ground up to get people to buy lootboxes.
> I also agree that it'd be best if there was some in-game marketplace of sorts to trade duplicates of whatever you have.
They will also never do this because it interferes with their ability to squeeze lootbox purchases out of people. It also creates the possibility of a third-party market selling items for real money, which the company selling the game would not see, which is a big no-no.
If you don't understand these two points its obvious why you don't understand people's reactions.
It all depends on the costs of the game/greed of the publisher. I've played plenty of gatcha/f2p games that are incredibly generous with their game models. To the point where I've been able to enjoy a full game without ever paying a single penny. Sure, I won't get the rarest stuff, but I don't care to. I still got a chance to play a fun game for free.
Nothing in the dota 2 gameplay loop incentivizes buying lootboxes
literally the only fucking reason they do it is because it attracts massive sales from asia you fucking retards
its because non whites (who arent jews) all have shit living conditions and are willing to work like slaves, so they see they can make money for video games by playing a game and they all fucking buy it and play the shit out of it because at first they're making more than they would even at their actual job
but eventually they devalue the worth of the items and the money everyone gets for playing is way smaller, because they're all the ones grinding to sell the shit and not buy it like us westerners
cosmetics have no impact on the game
99% of the players not speaking your fucking language on your fucking server and lagging a fuckload, does have an impact on the game
what the fuck is wrong with you idiots complaining about literally every other aspect of this when none of that shit even matters because its fucking cosmetic
>than to just have a knee-jerk reaction to all f2p models with lootboxes
Companies can smell the money and you know they are going to slowly combine the "60 dollars you have the game" and "FREE TO PLAY but make sure to pay up to do anything!" models
They already made season passes and locked content normal, they will try to get some form of lootboxes up and running just to squeeze a few more pennies from us.
But then, that just means that no games with random chances are for you. And this goes from TCG to even something like Pokemon.
Any personal issue you could have with it, comes down to disliking chance. Moreover, a lot of f2p games let you grind for currency. It ultimately comes down to how generous people are with their systems. Which comes down to individual greed, rather than the model itself.
Is it gonna be their natural intent though? I've played games where this isn't the case, and stuff like that was purely cosmetic.
Also, there are games with marketplaces, a few have been mentioned ITT.
That's because Valve is the singular odd man out in the lootbox scenario. Outside of TF2 all of their lootboxes are purely cosmetic (and in TF2 the weapons you can get from them are all easily obtained without using them), all the items are tradable, and you can actually make money from them if you're smart or lucky. They're about as close to good lootboxes as you can get, with the only shitty caveat being the keys to open them.
But that's corporate greed, not the model itself. Prior to, you had 5 editions of the same game, and were forced to buy it. Or arcade units that were impossible to beat, and cost money to play.
This has never changed. The business model itself isn't flawed and can ve beneficial for indie devs. Corporations will be greedy by nature no matter what. So rather than having a knee jerk reaction to anyone wanting to try a f2p model, why not look at it on a case by case badis, and asses whether it's reasonable or not.
I buy in bulk when it comes to TCGs. Yes the "secret rares" are typically rigged but if you buy a case of a good set you can usually break even trading off what you don't need for what you do at the next big event.
Loot boxes aren't like that, you're usually just stuck with something useless you can do nothing with
But see, there's evidence it can be done well, and there's room for indie devs to try a new business model that's less risky than getting a huge loan or Kickstarter.
I think it's more fair to look at how the system is implemented on a case by case basis, rather than assume that all games made using it must be predatory and should be shunned.
But that's cause of how they are implemented. It is most certainly possible to allow for a similar model to be replicated digitally if you incorporate a marketplace to go with it.
>Kneejerk reaction
>case by case basis
>indie devs could use it
Are we being trolled by a bot or some poor shill that hasn't figured out EA stopped sending the checks?
I'm not talking about EA. In fact, I never cared about what EA did because I never intended to buy their nuStar Wars game anyway. But this absurd reaction to any and all lootbox model as if it was the antiChrist is absurd.
Yeah, fuck EA for ruining something that's useful for indie devs in the eyes of the public.
Y-you're not a indie dev that's trying to implement F2P lootboxes in his game to pay for it, right?
You see those toys?
They don't have a $60 down payment and a 40 year history of being a complete product before it sold, or it failed.
Now fuck off and die you corporate millennial neckbeard retarded limp dick fuck.
Yes, I am.
I don't have a million dollar budget to make a game, and fighting games are expensive.
$150,000 a character, which I managed to cut down to $50,000. And that's not even getting into 1P content, or stages, or voice work, or music, or most of importantly of all, marketing. In order to make the game I wanna make, it has to be iterative in a way that grows over time. Not something that's front-loaded from the getgo.
>posts 7 Deadly Shits
>talks like an edgy teen
>expects to be taken seriously
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