Technically they tried that with self regulation. It didn’t work. In fact according to the ESRB’s own guidelines, loot boxes in games should automatically set the rating to Adult Only, as by their own definition it Is gambling, but they publicly stated it isn’t gambling.

I don’t know, if that were the case, wouldn’t a second director be credited for its making as well? Besides, it’s a much more inspiring story if the same director just did a bad job, took it to heart, and really put in the work to make a product that actually surpassed the original that everybody loved.

I know, it’s just funny that the same guy is responsible for what is considered the worst and later the best one in the franchise. XP

It’s also funny that it was directed by the guy behind DMC 2. :V

In case you ever had doubts that loot boxes were predatory.

And for that matter they appear to actually be worse than Battlefront 2 according to some accounts.

No tweaks like this will ever change the fact that Star Cards inherently debalance the game as upgrades instead of sidegrades or cosmetics.

I hate when game difficulties lower the player’s capabilities in an effort to seem harder. There’s no reward in it, it’s just punishment for wanting to give the enemies a fighting chance. The best way to tackle difficulties imo has always been stuff like adding additional environmental hazards, or having different…

Doesn’t self-insert refer to the author, not the reader?

Like I get that, but for BotW for some reason he’s explicitly Link, not the player character. Few characters actually refer to him by name, so it could have been easily written out of the script to allow you to just name him. It’s odd that they felt the need to make him NOT the player character, but also not give him…

That just isn’t true. Yes, games have gotten more expensive to make, but nowhere near as much as people assume and most of that money hasn’t actually gone into game development. It has gone almost entirely into marketing. Bungie themselves have admitted this, saying Destiny was nowhere NEAR the half billion dollar…

Really Bungie/Activision only themselves to blame for that. Between general repeated dishonesty both from Bungie and the rest of the industry as well as hyping the series as if it was something revolutionary, they’ve put people’s expectations up pretty high and dropped them pretty hard.

I didn’t say you said cosmetic lootboxes were okay. My point from the beginning was that just because something was cosmetic didn’t mean we should ignore the surrounding issues of pushing microtransactions in increasingly shadier ways, which is what the sentiment “it’s just cosmetic” actually does. People are…

Sure, but then where do you draw the line for this sort of thing? You’re saying that I’m approaching this in a black and white way but conversely ignoring issues just because they’re relegated to cosmetics is equally black and white. What if the grind was taken up to days? Months? Years? What if the whole distribution…

I firmly believe people should stop using the “it’s just cosmetic” argument to excuse anti-consumer business decisions, since all that does is normalize things to enable them to get worse if Overwatch -> Battlefront 2 was any indication. The “it’s just cosmetic” thing only goes so far since you know eventually…

They outright stated it was temporary and that it would return in some (probably the same) form.

or you could build a sense of pride and accomplishment by constructing a robot to grind progression for you.

Worth noting for PC users, it’s also discounted heavily on Humble Bundle.

Worth noting for PC users, it’s also discounted heavily on Humble Bundle.

The most disturbing part also has to be that these, along with CS:GO’s, weren’t introduced anywhere near at launch, but rather after the game had picked up Steam. I’m glad I was on the fence about it, and frankly practices like that convinced me not to buy games - especially multiplayer - until after a discount (as…

You’re neglecting the part in the same sentence where they reference that it is in essence a casino.