Gotta love the ‘don’t worry, we balanced this by making sure you also have to be a certain level to use the cards you get randomly’ bit.

Yeah, this isn’t exactly making me optimistic.

This ^
I keep getting the same comment when I share my opinions on loot boxes, generally something along the lines of “well then don’t buy or play the game then”

That’s the plan, bub.

I’m not saying that big budget games can survive on just the sticker price, I’m saying that there are ways that exist that aren’t loot boxes. I’d also be fine with these big games just costing more in general.

Jim Sterling, annoying!?

...yeah, I can see that.

“No number of angry YouTube videos is going to change that.”

Well not directly, no, but they get the word out there. We most likely wouldn’t be talking about this topic to the scale that we are currently if it wasn’t for various popular personalities making a stink. They put words to the problematic aspects of these…

You took the words from my heart and published them as an article. Thank you.

Well yeah, that’s certainly a business model that works. I would argue over whether it results in a quality game worth my time, but it definitely makes money.

A lot of people don’t like loot boxes and reviewers are people. The industry can keep pushing these sorts of models and consumers and critics are going to respond, it’s not a matter of professionalism.

If the super serious thing that’s the future model for video games is treated as either a joke or a malignant practice…

Well, I did say “in the vein of baseball cards”, models that require additional investment for a chance at getting what you want. Clearly collectibles in games have existed, and I’m sure that in some they were literally baseball cards.

Well no, I’d argue that the point of buying a skin (for me at least) is to wear it and feel pretty and cool and whatnot while playing a game. They only became a “collectable” item in the vein of baseball cards when they were inserted behind these sort of skinner-box, gambling economies.

I think that’s what a lot of people will end up doing, honestly.

I think the complaints would be similar if the game itself was priced as a premium mobile game and not the usual free-to-play fodder.

One could argue that Loot Boxes in these sort of single-player games are inherently nonsensical.

The people being “milked” are a much smaller portion of the population that isn’t, and yet they provide a much higher (relative to their size) and statistically significant portion of the profits for these types of skinner-box economies. Companies then design around this small percentage of players, making it as…

You are buying baseball cards to collect more baseball cards, and the whole point of them is to collect and buy them. Loot-box gambling for game content that actually effects the $60 experience you already invested is in a completely different situational context and has the capacity for more fine-tuned abuse than…

Since I value losing myself in a game and trying to stay immersed in the world, I feel like all these currencies and “daily challenges” and loot boxes and legal gambling for digital goods would just keep pulling me out of feeling like a badass wraith overlord. Like...does Talion just toss gold into a black bubbling…

I’m willing to wait and see what the reviews say. It’s just not a good sign, expected as it is.

I’m definitely setting myself up to be disappointed (at least by these big-name games) by having such a high bar, for sure. That being said, I have so many games and so many I want to play that it’s not too big of a deal to me to just write off games that try to implement any sort of microtransaction economy. I still…

Gah, another potentially great game for me stuffed with microtransactions.

If I could play the game and literally never see that part of it unless I entered some special menu, then it’d be tolerable. That’s never the case, unfortunately :\

How pedantic of you.