Let's talk about Loot Boxes

[Bacon Horsemeat]

I've just watched a couple of FIFA pack opening videos, hundreds of thousands of views. I honestly don't get it. Paying for virtual players with stats of negligible improvement to be in your custom online team with a dramatic reveal.... growing up at a time when you can just make your own players with your own custom stats... baffling.

 

But if money can be made, and people don't mind, fair play (lol) to EA.

[TehStu]

It's really bad when you're locked into that compulsive cycle, especially when you don't realize it. Perhaps these video people have it paid for by tips or whatever these things do, but for folk like me and thee we're wasting money.

[sprite]

On 25/10/2017 at 11:25, grindmouse said:

I realised until now the loot box system is one of the major reasons I have stopped playing Overwatch. It's a huge turn-off because I could grind seemingly forever without obtaining the item I want, or earning enough in-game currency to buy it. It's especially nefarious given Overwatch's target audience age.

 

Compared to Siege where you earn currency every game, and most items are available for in-game currency or can be bought outright. So for example if I want a weapon skin then I can work out I probably need to play for so many games/hours to unlock it or how much real money it will take to obtain. 

With Overwatch there is no such guarantee and therefore less control over character customisation and less incentive.

 

Siege has introduced lootboxes in addition to an in-game shop, so you have a chance of unlocking a random item every win, but it also gives you currency every time. A much more consumer-friendly way of implementing lootboxes.

 

You are aware that you get currency in loot boxes in Overwatch, and you can spend that currency how you like?

 

It is true you don't get currency as much as in Siege (e.g. 25000 for a character), but then in Overwatch you need less currency (e.g. 3000 for a shiny shiny) to buy things.

 

Not to mention that in Siege that there are things you can buy with real world money.

 

And it's taking me weeks to save up for the new characters in Siege, which have abilities and things that change the way a person plays, as opposed to an emote.

[sprite]

2 minutes ago, grindmouse said:

 

Yeah aware of it but due to the random nature there's no guarantee when you'll get currency. I amassed 750 so far and whilst I'm only level 18 it'a a decent amount of playtime and loot boxes.

 

I agree it sucks, but to suggest that Siege's loot boxes are ok because you know it's going to take you forever to get what you want isn't really fair.  That's shit too.

 

The problem is that it takes you forever to get one or two pieces you want, regardless of the method.

[sprite]

5 minutes ago, grindmouse said:

 

In Overwatch I could play for 300 hours and still not get the piece I want. It's worse.

 

That's an exaggeration.

 

Siege is much worse starting out (edited to add: which your level 18 Overwatch comparison makes fair) where you have minimal characters you can select from.

 

But yeah if stuff matters that much to you that you won't even play the game anymore because you won't unlock a cosmetic item, these games probably aren't for you.  After all the point is you're meant to enjoy playing.  

[sprite]

Just now, grindmouse said:

 

I play Siege to enjoy it, not to grind the dlc. Really mature argument, "if you're going to criticize it don't play it". Great one.

 

You said that the loot box system is one of the main reasons you stopped playing Overwatch...

[sprite]

4 minutes ago, grindmouse said:

 

Right, I didn't realise you were referring back to my comment so apologies for the sarcastic response. I'm busy right now so win this Rllmuk thread, Overwatch is great, it's loot system is great, Siege is shit, it should've been free to play. Cba. Have a nice evening.

 

Actually I don't enjoy playing Overwatch anymore and I much prefer Siege, but that's more to do with being a bit burnt out from playing it for 400+ something levels.  I just think all loot box mechanics are equally pants!

[Varsity]

23 minutes ago, grindmouse said:

 

Right, I didn't realise you were referring back to my comment so apologies for the sarcastic response. I'm busy right now so win this Rllmuk thread, Overwatch is great, it's loot system is great, Siege is shit, it should've been free to play. Cba. Have a nice evening.

 

  You really are intolerable 

[Zael]

In Siege is the new content like characters and maps given out for free?

[sprite]

19 minutes ago, Zael said:

In Siege is the new content like characters and maps given out for free?

 

Maps yes anyone can play.

 

Characters you need 25,000 in game currency to unlock each character if you haven’t paid Real Cash Money for the season pass, which @grindmouse has so I’ve a feeling he forgets what it’s like for those who haven’t (I’ve only managed to unlock one so far despite playing three-five times a week since the patch).

[sprite]

10 hours ago, grindmouse said:

 

It's strawmen all over the place. People citing Siege's character unlock system  to favour Overwatch's loot boxes. Arguing that having zero choice in what you get is the same  content you can grind or pay directly for via four different methods. 

 

You're welcome. 

 

Straw lady, thank you very much.  The rest of your post makes very little sense.

[Zael]

Just now, sprite said:

 

Maps yes anyone can play.

 

Characters you need 25,000 in game currency to unlock each character if you haven’t paid Real Cash Money for the season pass, which grindmouse has so I’ve a feeling he forgets what it’s like for those who haven’t (I’ve only managed to unlock one so far despite playing three-five times a week since the patch).

 

Thanks. That seems like it explains somewhat the difference between the two. Overwatch doesn't charge for new characters but instead relies on players spending more loot boxes.

 

Siege can rely on a steady revenue stream everytime it drops new DLC and so doesn't need to be as reliant on people spending lots on loot boxes.

[sprite]

6 minutes ago, Zael said:

 

Thanks. That seems like it explains somewhat the difference between the two. Overwatch doesn't charge for new characters but instead relies on players spending more loot boxes.

 

Siege can rely on a steady revenue stream everytime it drops new DLC and so doesn't need to be as reliant on people spending lots on loot boxes.

 

Agreed.  Because spending ££ in Siege means you can buy things that actually change your game, people are probably more inclined to do it.

 

Each to their own of course, Siege also has cosmetic random unlocks (that again you can purchase with currency like Overwatch) but they seem to get less focus because there are also more meaningful things to spend currency on.  Siege also has cosmetic things that can ONLY be bought with ££, too.

 

The idea that Overwatch is the devil for giving a roll of the dice for unlocking purely cosmetic tat just seems harsh, when other games out and out require extra ££ for the same.  It certainly hasn’t stopped me playing it.  The player base is the main culprit there.

[Zael]

9 minutes ago, grindmouse said:

 

I see what you're saying but I don't think it's quite as straightforward as that. sprite says she played  OW for 400 hours. If she played Siege for that time she would never have to grind for anything, she would have a bank of ingame currency that would buy her all existing operators, and next years operators and beyond. It doesn't take long to grind over 50k in 3 months if you play regularly. 

 

And there are tons of aesthetic dlc as well as operators. AND the dlc operators aren't essential. You don't need to grind them all. 

In OW I had all the characters from the start but I wasn't incentivised to try them all, I only ever played with 5 of them.

 

So I don't think it quite balances this way to say that paid operators counter-balance OW lootboxes, but even if they did I prefer Siege's method because I get to choose the content I unlock. 

 

But if you're looking at a financial model for a game you have to look at both the players who play for 400 hours and the players who only pop in every so often. So you mention Sprite which is a fair example of someone who is probably getting more out of the Siege system.

 

But then let's take the example of someone who only gets to play a few hours every weekend. In Overwatch they get all heroes straight away for free whereas in Siege if they want to unlock all of the heroes they'll probably have to fork out or just wait months and months.

[Zael]

2 minutes ago, grindmouse said:

 

A good point, I don't have an answer to it but I would propose that people with limited gametime aren't getting to master all of those characters anyway, won't be as invested in the games or are more likely to have the disposable income to pay for the dlc. No idea what proportion of the playerbase that hypothetically accounts for though.

 

I don't think mastering a character should have anything to do with it though. There are plenty of games I can think of that I'm no good with but I'd be pissed if parts were put behind a paywall. And as for being more invested or having disposable income that's nothing that anyone can have any certainty on.

 

I'm not giving Overwatch a pass here either. I play a lot of Blizzard games and they can be pretty horrible when it comes to taking money off people. The game does force you into spending more money than you should have to in order to get the thing you want, the same is true for Hearthstone. But in fairness to Overwatch it does give you the most important things for free.

 

 

[sprite]

Ha, people who have limited time to play aren't just workaholics like me.  Some of them have kids, hence not really on the disposable income front   Edit: Or they may be kids themselves who only play outside school hours or when they're allowed. 

 

I managed to dump a lot of time into Overwatch because it's Blizzard's magic formula of gaming crack until it's not, but feel much better for branching out a bit more this year and enjoying other games  

[sprite]

For what it's worth according to my Xbox dashboard I have played 144 hours of Siege (PS my OW time is apparently 685 hours according to dash, that's depressing), and I would say most of that is since Operation Health launched.  So quite a lot, really, and it still takes forever to unlock everything.  Would be nice if one of the new operators fell out of an Alpha Pack

[Zael]

3 minutes ago, grindmouse said:

Just to put the operator locking Siege in perspective. You can unlock the first 4 with 2000 renown which you will get from watching tutorial videos and playing the Situations. You should complete the Situations before venturing online anyway as they're tutorials.

 

Additionally you can earn around 2k in weekly challenges and you get around 200renown per game.

 

So you're looking at around 120 online games to unlock all the core operators if you dont do any of the challenges. The average casual match takes around 20 minutes. So... 40 hours of play roughly and you should have all the core operators unlocked. That's not excessive for an online shooter and they are dripfed in that time. Plus I'd say it's critical to play and master the core ones.

 

So 40 hours to unlock all the playable operators? That's actually not too bad.

 

Edit: actually what do you mean by "core"?

[sprite]

4 minutes ago, Zael said:

 

So 40 hours to unlock all the playable operators? That's actually not too bad.

 

No, not all operators.

 

I'm not sure how much the "earlier" season 2 operators cost but he's meaning the ones that are in the base game and I think season 1 operators.

 

The newest ones, of which there are currently three, are 25,000 renown each.  So 200 renown per game of circa 20 mins, 600 renown an hour is 41 hours per operator.  

[Zael]

Wait so, if you buy this game you have you play 40 hours to unlock all the characters that came with the game you bought?

[sprite]

20 minutes ago, Zael said:

Wait so, if you buy this game you have you play 40 hours to unlock all the characters that came with the game you bought?

 

Yeah, but it's ok because most people give up long before them as it's so unforgiving for new players.

 

It's really daunting starting out because you don't know where to start character wise, no idea whose playstyle may suit you best.  And the online game is brutal when you're new to it so it would really be good to have all the operators to start with (there is a more fully featured version of the game you can buy for more money that unlocks the originals, though).  The majority of the gameplay is online.

 

It's a great game though, just really really really needs patience and persistence in the beginning.

[Zael]

Just now, sprite said:

 

Yeah, but it's ok because most people give up long before them as it's so unforgiving for new players.

 

It's really daunting starting out because you don't know where to start character wise, no idea whose playstyle may suit you best.  And the online game is brutal when you're new to it so it would really be good to have all the operators to start with (there is a more fully featured version of the game you can buy for more money that unlocks the originals, though).

 

I'm honestly surprised it hasn't gotten more criticism for that, it sounds really greedy. Imagine Blizzard did that with Overwatch? You'd never hear the end of it. It's like a free to play model on a full priced game. 

 

[wev]

18 hours ago, Bacon Horsemeat said:

I've just watched a couple of FIFA pack opening videos, hundreds of thousands of views. I honestly don't get it. Paying for virtual players with stats of negligible improvement to be in your custom online team with a dramatic reveal.... growing up at a time when you can just make your own players with your own custom stats... baffling.

 

But if money can be made, and people don't mind, fair play (lol) to EA.

 

 

I've shared this story a few times now but it was utterly depressing watching it play out and having no real way of preventing it from getting worse

 

I used to work for Blockbuster and one of our regulars would buy FIFA every year, likewise CoD etc, I wasn't one to judge. However EA released Ultimate Team and things became rather sad to witness. Every week he'd be in the shop, usually buying the biggest points pack he had the money for, more often than not it was the 44.99/49.99 pack, all of which he'd openly say was going to be spent on Ultimate Team. I'd make some sort of "really? but Game X is out and I know you said you wanted to play it" and he'd say he did but he wanted to get more cards instead. At this point I didn't know he had kids etc so thought "well its his money".

 

But then he traded his copy of FIFA in, usually by this point it wasn't worth a whole lot even though it was half way through the football season and take the cash. A few weeks later he came back and bought another copy along with a bunch of points, I thought it was odd but didn't ask, felt it wasn't my place to do so.

 

The following season he pre-ordered the new FIFA, specifically the special edition which came with extra FUT packs or whatever, and the cycle continued except he begun trading other stuff in to get points. I asked why he didn't buy them using his card through the store and he said his girlfriend wouldn't let him. His point for trading in his copy of FIFA was earlier this time, but again he was back a few weeks later to buy another copy and then back the following week to get more points etc. A while later his girlfriend phoned the store and asked us to put a comment on his account asking the staff not to sell him any Microsoft points which I adhered to but I'd regularly check his account and some of my other colleagues would do so or he'd be buying them through a non member account, or from Sainsburys or GAME, there was nothing you could do about it. At one point he was made redundanct but he'd continue, it was an addiction but there was very little anyone could do about it.,

[BossSaru]

Indeed. I have worked retail and that type of behaviour is similar to people hooked on lottery scratchcards. It was incredibly depressing to see someone come in with a few twenties and spend them all on the cards, and then a few minutes later coming back with a few winners and exchange them for a few more cards. More often than not it was clear that these people did not really have the cash to spare, and that this flurry to feed their habit would be followed by financial hardship until their next pay packet.

 

Loot boxes seem to be providing a similar service to a younger demographic, programming their brains to get hooked on the endorphins of a win before they become old enough to be allowed to gamble, and giving them a head start on that destructive cycle.

[Varsity]

12 hours ago, grindmouse said:

 

It's strawmen all over the place. People citing Siege's character unlock system  to favour Overwatch's loot boxes. Arguing that having zero choice in what you get is the same  content you can grind or pay directly for via four different methods. 

 

You're welcome. 

 

It was more a general character observation than anything to be honest...I don't care for the loot box argument as in my eyes at least, every loot box game is a disgrace. 

 

Also, how many single player games do you know that you have to play 40 hours to "get all the levels." What a load of drivel.  That's in no way the same as buying operators for Siege  

 

 

[Zael]

13 minutes ago, grindmouse said:

 

Let's take a different example. Do you get all the Kingdoms in Mario Ofyssey straight away or do you have to invest time and play the game to earn/unlock them?

 

 

 

In Mario Odyssey you're not being killed by levels that you don't have access to. You also don't have the option of buying the levels to speed up your access to them.

 

The single player level comparison doesn't fit on so many levels. 

[footle]

3 hours ago, Zael said:

 

In Mario Odyssey you're not being killed by levels that you don't have access to. You also don't have the option of buying the levels to speed up your access to them.

 

The single player level comparison doesn't fit on so many levels. 

 

Though the constant amibo adverts do.

[Harsin]

Behold CoD's new loot boxes.

 

 

They open in front of other players. All the better to tempt other people to start splashing the cash on them.

[SozzlyJoe]

Opening in front of other players is sick, sadistic genius.

Loot boxes are pretty evil. I am the kind of totally non-aethestic person who never changes from the default skin or just hits randomise in a character creator a few times, and even I feel a little thrill when I open a loot box, even though I do not give the slightest shit for anything I could get in it. I can only imagine how much this stuff would play on someone who was into it. The Overwatch GAF thread (RIP) was chock full of people absolutely raging about loot box drop rates.

 

[BossSaru]

How long before there are reports that CoD is showing people getting better loot than they actually receive, to encourage other players to spend monies?