Let's talk about Loot Boxes

[Broker]

EA are just the greediest bastards on earth. It’s a shame though, the stupid way things were limited in the first game and it thought standard FPS features like having a fucking grenade were abilities to equip was awful, but maybe it was just a dry run for this version where it’s just as shit but you have to pay loads in real cash.

[TehStu]

3 minutes ago, Broker said:

EA are just the greediest bastards on earth

Nutshell.

 

Although I assume they still make money on EA Access, even though it's a great deal for players.

[Nate Dogg III]

Even I won't try to defend Battlefront. They're probably looking at 20 million sales for that and from what I understand it's the grubbiest implementation of the idea I've ever seen in a paid-for game.

[Stanley]

It's not good for the Star Wars brand. I wonder what Disney would have to say about it all.

[Nate Dogg III]

Disney never quite worked out how to make enough money from games. I expect they'll be too busy lighting cigars with fifties to care.

[TehStu]

I dunno, they seem a bit more protective about Star Wars IP that's front and centre. Moreso than LucasFilm, anyway.

 

edit - fifties? Benjamins.

[MW_Jimmy]

Statement from DICE:

https://www.ea.com/games/starwars/battlefront/battlefront-2/news/thank-you-beta

 

Of note:

Quote

As a balance goal, we’re working towards having the most powerful items in the game only earnable via in-game achievements.

Quote

If you get a duplicate Star Card in a crate, you will get crafting parts which you can then use to help upgrade the Star Card of your choice.

 

Well, at at least that's looking like something ever slightly less obnoxious.

[Broker]

Word from the beta is that it takes hours to earn crates and the shit you get to craft more cards takes ages to learn. You’re going to be at a significant competitive disadvantage straight out of the gate compared to people who are wasting more cash on the game than you are.

[Flub]

10 hours ago, MW_Jimmy said:

Statement from DICE:

https://www.ea.com/games/starwars/battlefront/battlefront-2/news/thank-you-beta

 

Of note:

 

Well, at at least that's looking like something ever slightly less obnoxious.

 

They pretty much describe how the system worked in the beta in that message despite trying to imply it'll be different. Let's just say I won't be surprised if on launch it's basically how we saw it in the beta with possibly a few minor tweaks thrown in as a sop.

[BossSaru]

I predict that a fair few players unwilling to spend cash on loot boxes are going to end up uninstalling the game after the scoreboards get consistently dominated by half a dozen players all being Boba Fett and similarly overpowered characters. I am fine to be dominated by a player who is amazing at the game; less so when it is simply someone who has thrown an extra £20 at EA to get a character who has a better gun than I can realistically unlock in the same timeframe.

 

The Metro article linked above does articulate a very good point on cosmetic loot boxes which makes me less keen on them:

Until this year loot boxes have caused relatively little concern, with last year’s Overwatch being roundly praised for its implementation of the idea. Loot boxes in Overwatch only ever contain cosmetic extras such as new character skins or animations. Lots of people still pay for them, even though they give no in-game advantage, and so Blizzard is able to fund free DLC for everyone in the form of a steady stream of new maps and characters.

While that sounds like a win-win situation the obvious problem is that the random nature of each box’s content means buying one is essentially gambling. Once you’ve paid your money you have no guarantee of what you’re going to get, which creates serious issues for the easily addicted. And particularly for younger players who know they want a particular item but aren’t lucky enough to get it.

[Stanley]

That Metro article sums it up for me. We can argue over the definition of gambling or cosmetic items vs game altering ones until the cows come home. 

 

What it comes down to is addiction. It's a tricky subject to deal with when talking about video games which by their very nature have to be addictive to a certain extent. 

 

But loot boxes prey on those who don't know when to stop. Who basically cannot stop because it's become an illness. Saying things like, it's fine because you don't need to buy them, you can just play the game as normal and never go near them, or, they're only cosmetic, there's no game play advantage - is to just totally ignore the fact that these publishers are deliberately aiming them at those with addiction problems. They're targeting addicts and then turning around and saying to everyone else, it's ok, they make it possible for the rest of you to carry on playing at no extra cost. It's disgusting.

[Talk Show Host]

17 hours ago, Broker said:

EA are just the greediest bastards on earth. It’s a shame though, the stupid way things were limited in the first game and it thought standard FPS features like having a fucking grenade were abilities to equip was awful, but maybe it was just a dry run for this version where it’s just as shit but you have to pay loads in real cash.

 

Everything is calculated. The bare bones first game can only make more people buy the second, more complete one. Attach the loot gambling trash and you have yourself a machine of money coming up for the holidays and a new movie for that extra oomph. Garbage. Complete garbage.

[TehStu]

That Metro article snippet reminded me that Nintendo do kinda participate in this, as they own a chunk of the Pokemon Company, right? Pokemon Go is full of purely cosmetic tat. Sure, you can dominate a load of gyms and rake in the coin to pay for it, but you know some people are just buying coins for outfits. And of course, there's the usual limited F2P mechanics which can be subverted by paying for extra tat, although at least there's no gambling aspect. To the stuff you buy, obviously the whole game itself is a giant RNG.

[Stanley]

Fire Emblem Heroes has loot boxes.

[amc]

I'm honestly going to actively swerve the biggest offenders, a shame as I quite fancied SWBF2 for its single player campaign. But fuck this loot crate noise. I'll pick them up way down the line for cheap. The only game I may waiver with is Forza 7 because I have a One X pre-order. From the little I've seen of that game there are mentions of loot hates featuring quite prominently. This shit needs to go the way of the Dodo asap.

[Stanley]

I'm the same @amc Monolith are one of my favourite developers and I was looking forward to Shadow of War, same with Battlefront. I just wouldn't be able to enjoy them no matter how polished and playable they may be, knowing that this shit supports them. 

 

Fortunately there are lots and lots of other games around that don't do it. 

[Broker]

Apparently you can decline the TOS and never have to see the loot boxes in Shadow of War

 

Report also contains info that PC players can just cheat to get tonnes of the non premium currency and skip the grind near the end, and the usual bizarre idea from the devs that the transactions are there as a “choice”, like their game is such shit that it’s worth paying actual cash to skip it. Really though, if they wanted to give players a choice they could just let you skip to whatever part of the game you want. What they actually want is more cash.

 

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-10-13-shadow-of-war-players-are-using-tricks-and-exploits-to-combat-loot-boxes

[Qazimod]

I know comments on loot boxes are all over the place and they’re more or less saying similar things but after seeing this thread I put something together for @Badger's website here - the tl;dr being that cosmetic drops are fine, gameplay perks are dodgy, and rerolling after getting duplicates is a waste of money at best and playing the slots at worst. I also dropped a mention for the forum and the petition posted earlier.  It’s only a small site that earns a modest amount of views, but I feel like speaking up about this stuff is better than doing nothing, especially if you have an "outlet" like a website or podcast.  

[Jazz Glands]

I've spent way more than I should have the last couple of years on ball spinning in the My Club mode of PES. I feel almost ashamed not to recognise it at first for what it was, but it is straight up gambling with very little difference to a fruit machine in PES' instance. I'd say at one point I was close to developing a full on gambling problem with that mode. And I've never gambled, in the traditional sense, in my life. It's quite frightening when I think about it and I still find myself tempted to do 'one more spin' even now

[Stanley]

I really don't think cosmetic items only  are fine either. They're still preying on kids and addicts. If people want to pay for those items they should just be allowed to buy them outright. 

[TehStu]

Exactly, make all that tat dlc, as it used to be. 360 games used to be littered with $1 purchases here and there for cosmetic stuff.

[Stanley]

Agreed. I'd be pissed off if every time I decided to treat myself to some new livery in Elite Dangerous I had to pay for the chance of getting the one I wanted. It's total BS.

[Qazimod]

33 minutes ago, Stanley said:

I really don't think cosmetic items only  are fine either. They're still preying on kids and addicts. If people want to pay for those items they should just be allowed to buy them outright. 

 

Oops, I meant "fine" from a "not breaking the game" perspective rather than a "not corrupting impressionable minds" one. This is what happens when I tl;dr  

[Stanley]

I get what you mean, it's the lesser of two evils, but for many players customising their character is part of the game, so it's still 'game breaking' from that perspective. Take the shaders in Desiny, for example.

[Flub]

A good article on Kotaku

 

https://kotaku.com/loot-boxes-are-designed-to-exploit-us-1819457592

 

Moment for moment, loot boxes are engineered to capture attention with a mixture of spectacle and psychological trickery not unlike what you might find at a slot machine.

 

Whether they dole out cosmetics or gameplay-affecting items, loot boxes of any sort exist for the purpose of exploiting players. Whether it’s offering the chance to get Symmetra’s new skin or get a better rifle in Battlefront II, the only reason the loot box exists is to prey on the economically vulnerable. You are not a valued player; you are a statistic on a spreadsheet. You are red or black ink. Loot boxes certainly aren’t there for fun. They have always been designed for the purpose of making sure that a company turns a profit.

[Stanley]

One thing I don't understand, and another reason why the videogames industry is it's own worst enemy at times, is why AAA games are usually always discounted by quite a large margin fairly soon after release. 

 

To me if games held their value for longer then publishers would get more money just by selling the standard game at it's proper price. But because we know that if we wait a few weeks we'll generally get a discount, then it stands to reason that many customers will wait for that discount. Nintendo seem to manage fine without this model and you rarely see their games discounted in the weeks or months following release, and they're also a publisher who don't rely heavily on DLC. It's there in some games but we never see them chopping games up and selling them piecemeal  like we do other publishers, or using loot boxes to subsidise their business.

 

In short, how do Nintendo manage to do without them? 

[Broker]

15 minutes ago, Stanley said:

I get what you mean, it's the lesser of two evils, but for many players customising their character is part of the game, so it's still 'game breaking' from that perspective. Take the shaders in Desiny, for example.

 

I can kinda see people wanting ships, emotes and sparrows, because the game grades those things and does it's best to make you feel like you need purple or yellow ones, and those are entirely locked inside the lootbox style bright engrams, and are things that other players see and that might affect character customisation in that way. But it's impossible to play through the game without earning hundreds of shaders, and you can buy them for nothing with the currency you get for dismantling lootbox shite (they're pretty much the only things you can easily afford with that currency). Since the game launched and people were moaning about it on the first day before they'd actually played the game, the only complaint I've seen about shaders from the community is that there's no way to mass delete them, so I don't think they're the great example of a terrible system people (who I'm assuming haven't played the game much) keep making them out to be. 

 

It was genuinely and definitely harder to customise your colour in the first game before they were consumables that came from lootboxes, because they were infinite use items that coloured your whole outfit at once the requirements for getting them were ridiculous, meaning I had to play for over a hundred hours and grind a number of activities for ridiculous amounts of time in order to make my armour black, something I could accomplish in the new game within a few hours of completing the campaign. I know you feel these things are all as bad as each other, but in that game it's the emotes which you use to communicate and have fun with other players being locked away in the loot box system which is shit. The shaders are, regardless of your thoughts on loot boxes, massively improved from the first game.

[Stanley]

To be fair I haven't played Destiny 2 and I'm not one for doing up my character cosmetically, so I was just going by what was said about them online. Apologies if it's inaccurate. But, you get the gist of what I was saying.

[Broker]

Yeah no I absolutely do there, it's a game I've played tonnes of and despite having gotten "enough" of all the loot box items without paying I'm still weirdly tempted by them. It's just not the shaders that are shite, it's locking away the emotes that's really annoying  

[Flub]

Comments are the usual Reddit shitfest