Loot boxes are not bad game design, say devs

Armageus said:
Another thought though is that some of the pay-to-unlock (e.g. weapons shortcuts, or vehicle shortcuts) are born by people's sense of entitlement these days - want to see everything, but without working towards it (whereas I get a sense of achievement when I have "unlocked" something through progression)
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Could not disagree more, it's hardly a shocker that people want access to he stuff they have paid for, they are born of greed by the devs, the awful mobile gaming scene and games being developed with 'as a service' being at the top of the design tree.
It's like going to the cinema and not getting the ending of the film because you haven't spent enough time in the cinema.

Progression, progression, progression is all anyone talks about and yet all I see is people getting stuff for playing longer, that isn't progression its just yet more of this incessant loot culture that's infected games for years and the basis upon the awful loot box system is based upon.
Skill, map design and a fair playing field should be enough to keep anyone engaged as it should be fun and that in itself should keep people engaged, unfortunately grinding, unlocks, levelling up and loot drops seem to have masked much of that and the community seems to have not noticed.

However I am old, I am an ex Q3 and UT99 player and perhaps just haven't lowered my standards enough yet to think that any of these systems actually add anything worthwhile to the game.
 
Marvel Heroes was doing it for ages. Some characters/skins you had to buy cards with in game currency (Gs) that you purchased with real cash. When you opened those cards, you may or may not get certain tokens. When you got enough tokens, you would use them to "buy" the character. Marvel Heroes only did it with cosmetic skins or special characters, so no pay to win, but there was no other way to get these specials other than buy cards with real money and gamble to see if you got enough tokens. If not, you had to buy more.

It gets very dodgy when the people playing/gambling are children.
 
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Cosmetic loot boxes that you can sell on are a problem imo. I think this is why PUBG is infested with so many hackers from China. The game costs half as much there and selling the 7 crates a week makes them the money back for the game in no time. So if their account gets banned its no problem to use the funds to buy another copy.

Plus there is also the fact some of the items sell for ridiculous amounts, like £200 - £400 for some rare items. Another reason for people to farm cases and its a lot quicker to do that if you cheat.
 
Nate75 said:
From the gambling industry's point of view it's a cracking way to get kids into the gambling itch - genius :(
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The gambling industry is probably spitting feather at the fact that game devs seem to be allowed to sell gambling products to kids. If they tried that, they would be in big trouble very quickly.
 
Zethor said:
Any type of buyable, random reward"lootbox" should lead to an +18 slapped on the game.
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Why? Parental controls and/or not saving any payment information, in conjunction with actually talking to my kids seems to work fine in my household.
 
Armageus said:
Why? Parental controls and/or not saving any payment information, in conjunction with actually talking to my kids seems to work fine in my household.
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Implying that your children when they grow up a bit care of what you say :rolleyes: Should we also let 13 year olds buy alchohol as long as you talk to them?
 
Armageus said:
Why? Parental controls and/or not saving any payment information, in conjunction with actually talking to my kids seems to work fine in my household.
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Not every child, parent or families are the same. That's why we have many with gambling addictions. Pay to win loot box game systems, is fuelling that persons addiction.
 
I just think EA pushed it too far, getting people to pay £60 for a game, then making loot crates that unlock higher powered items (weapons/characters) cost money, just seems like they pushed too far,

I don't really have a problem with Overwatch/CS system, or League of Legends, where the items are cosmetic, and in the case of LoL - the game is free to play anyway..
 
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