Division of a multiplayer base is unfortunate--but it's not like you couldn't play some games of the original Titanfall on XB1 two years after it came out (prior to the sequel coming out).
It's inconvenient, but not the end of the world. And it's not calculatingly predatory at least.
There's a solution already existing though... Paradox and Starbreeze have proven that expansions don't need to break up the playerbase.
Division of a multiplayer base is unfortunate--but it's not like you couldn't play some games of the original Titanfall on XB1 two years after it came out (prior to the sequel coming out).
It's inconvenient, but not the end of the world. And it's not calculatingly predatory at least.
There's a solution already existing though... Paradox and Starbreeze have proven that expansions don't need to break up the playerbase.
I have already paid more for Stellaris after buying it than it costed in the first place, and I'm actually enthusiastic about paying more soon to get Apocalypse.
That's how you get income stream without exploiting players.
I've bought overwatch lootboxes before, and I'll probably do so again before this event wraps up.
And I'm happy to do so.
Am I being exploited here?
Yes. Your turn:
Why are they sold randomly instead of deterministically ?
Seeing as I know exactly what I'm getting into, I think all of you falling over yourselves to call me a rube is a little premature on your part, and also flat out wrong.
And for your zinger of a question "Because that makes more money."
And why does that make more money? They could just increase the price per item.
Division of a multiplayer base is unfortunate--but it's not like you couldn't play some games of the original Titanfall on XB1 two years after it came out (prior to the sequel coming out).
It's inconvenient, but not the end of the world. And it's not calculatingly predatory at least.
There's a solution already existing though... Paradox and Starbreeze have proven that expansions don't need to break up the playerbase.
I have already paid more for Stellaris after buying it than it costed in the first place, and I'm actually enthusiastic about paying more soon to get Apocalypse.
That's how you get income stream without exploiting players.
I've bought overwatch lootboxes before, and I'll probably do so again before this event wraps up.
And I'm happy to do so.
Am I being exploited here?
Yes. Your turn:
Why are they sold randomly instead of deterministically ?
Seeing as I know exactly what I'm getting into, I think all of you falling over yourselves to call me a rube is a little premature on your part, and also flat out wrong.
You don't. You may think you do, but the skinner box forces these systems are designed to exploit are not something you can will away even if you understand how they work. The only winning move is not to play.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
+1
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HerrCronIt that wickedly supports taxationRegistered Userregular
Division of a multiplayer base is unfortunate--but it's not like you couldn't play some games of the original Titanfall on XB1 two years after it came out (prior to the sequel coming out).
It's inconvenient, but not the end of the world. And it's not calculatingly predatory at least.
There's a solution already existing though... Paradox and Starbreeze have proven that expansions don't need to break up the playerbase.
I have already paid more for Stellaris after buying it than it costed in the first place, and I'm actually enthusiastic about paying more soon to get Apocalypse.
That's how you get income stream without exploiting players.
I've bought overwatch lootboxes before, and I'll probably do so again before this event wraps up.
And I'm happy to do so.
Am I being exploited here?
Yes. Your turn:
Why are they sold randomly instead of deterministically ?
Seeing as I know exactly what I'm getting into, I think all of you falling over yourselves to call me a rube is a little premature on your part, and also flat out wrong.
And for your zinger of a question "Because that makes more money."
And why does that make more money? They could just increase the price per item.
They could, but are you going to assume that people would buy them at increasingly higher prices in the a volume that would be acceptable?
Division of a multiplayer base is unfortunate--but it's not like you couldn't play some games of the original Titanfall on XB1 two years after it came out (prior to the sequel coming out).
It's inconvenient, but not the end of the world. And it's not calculatingly predatory at least.
There's a solution already existing though... Paradox and Starbreeze have proven that expansions don't need to break up the playerbase.
I have already paid more for Stellaris after buying it than it costed in the first place, and I'm actually enthusiastic about paying more soon to get Apocalypse.
That's how you get income stream without exploiting players.
I've bought overwatch lootboxes before, and I'll probably do so again before this event wraps up.
And I'm happy to do so.
Am I being exploited here?
Yes. Your turn:
Why are they sold randomly instead of deterministically ?
Seeing as I know exactly what I'm getting into, I think all of you falling over yourselves to call me a rube is a little premature on your part, and also flat out wrong.
And for your zinger of a question "Because that makes more money."
To be clear here, I am absolutely not calling you a rube.
But the point you seem to be missing is that just because you're aware of exploitation, it doesn't stop it being exploitation.
Like, I have the state of mind to be able to go into a casino with $100 and say to myself "I'm going to leave after either 2 hours have passed, or I lose all this money, whichever comes first". I have avoided all the pitfalls of traditional gambling and protected myself thanks to my level of self control.
What I'm doing is still considered gambling.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
Division of a multiplayer base is unfortunate--but it's not like you couldn't play some games of the original Titanfall on XB1 two years after it came out (prior to the sequel coming out).
It's inconvenient, but not the end of the world. And it's not calculatingly predatory at least.
There's a solution already existing though... Paradox and Starbreeze have proven that expansions don't need to break up the playerbase.
I have already paid more for Stellaris after buying it than it costed in the first place, and I'm actually enthusiastic about paying more soon to get Apocalypse.
That's how you get income stream without exploiting players.
I've bought overwatch lootboxes before, and I'll probably do so again before this event wraps up.
And I'm happy to do so.
Am I being exploited here?
Yes. Your turn:
Why are they sold randomly instead of deterministically ?
Seeing as I know exactly what I'm getting into, I think all of you falling over yourselves to call me a rube is a little premature on your part, and also flat out wrong.
You don't. You may think you do, but the skinner box forces these systems are designed to exploit are not something you can will away even if you understand how they work. The only winning move is not to play.
making this argument personal seems like a bad idea.
Division of a multiplayer base is unfortunate--but it's not like you couldn't play some games of the original Titanfall on XB1 two years after it came out (prior to the sequel coming out).
It's inconvenient, but not the end of the world. And it's not calculatingly predatory at least.
There's a solution already existing though... Paradox and Starbreeze have proven that expansions don't need to break up the playerbase.
Starbreeze banking on The Walking Dead after posting pre-tax loss of $22.2M
Paradox interactive seems profitable based on their Year of the end reports.
Don't they do mostly single-player and small-scale multiplayer games?*
*Meaning that they don't have continuous huge hosting expenses, like modern FPS, Moba and MMORPG-games do.
Paradox's expansions are...very different. Games like Stellaris certainly get radical updates, and a lot of them, but there is very clearly zero hosting cost on their side (aside from whatever it takes for you to get the game form them). And if you don't have the actual DLC (and not the updated game itself), you don't play multiplayer with those do, as far as I now.
Division of a multiplayer base is unfortunate--but it's not like you couldn't play some games of the original Titanfall on XB1 two years after it came out (prior to the sequel coming out).
It's inconvenient, but not the end of the world. And it's not calculatingly predatory at least.
There's a solution already existing though... Paradox and Starbreeze have proven that expansions don't need to break up the playerbase.
I have already paid more for Stellaris after buying it than it costed in the first place, and I'm actually enthusiastic about paying more soon to get Apocalypse.
That's how you get income stream without exploiting players.
I've bought overwatch lootboxes before, and I'll probably do so again before this event wraps up.
And I'm happy to do so.
Am I being exploited here?
Yes. Your turn:
Why are they sold randomly instead of deterministically ?
Seeing as I know exactly what I'm getting into, I think all of you falling over yourselves to call me a rube is a little premature on your part, and also flat out wrong.
And for your zinger of a question "Because that makes more money."
And why does that make more money? They could just increase the price per item.
They could, but are you going to assume that people would buy them at increasingly higher prices in the a volume that would be acceptable?
Why would they not ? After all, people are already paying what they want. It would just be less trouble for them. One transaction at a known cost instead of many with an unknown total cost.
If there is no temptation to throw good money after bad, why do I keep hearing "Oh, I didn't get x skin, guess I'll pay another 10 bucks"
That's not good money after bad.
Have you gambled your rent money away and now desperately trying to win it back with your electric bill money?
that's good money, bad money-situation.
Ok. Simple question: why not sell the exact same items, individually, without any randomness ?
Question before I launch into a diatribe:
Are we distinguishing mobile game gacha from retail game lootboxes?
Because the two are fundamentally very similar, but not exactly the same in a lot of their design considerations due to how they interact with or don't interact with game mechanics, e.g. Overwatch's gameplay is not mechanically driven by what players get from lootboxes, even though the player's desire to play is stimulated by what they get from lootboxes.
For the sake of getting an actual answer, let's limit the question to loot boxes in AAA games.
Why not sell the same items directly, instead of selling them randomly ?
Oh, I'm not going to be nice about them, it's just a question about how assholish I was going to be about them!
It's all about the money.
In the case of the cosmetics in OW:
It's entirely because it makes more money. If you were to take the drop rates as flat, without any pity rate modifiers (e.g. like Fire Emblem Heroes has) or anti-duplicate modifiers (e.g. as OW says that they have, for which I do not know the rate adjustment), then the expected value of a Legendary is 13.5 lootboxes (according to the Chinese OW site). At the most "economical" rate of $40 USd for 50 lootboxes, the expected cost of a single Legendary is $10.80 USd. Given that you aren't guaranteed to get your desired Legendary on your first try and that the anti-duplicate modifier is maximally strong (i.e. you will 100% always get a Legendary you do NOT have until you have all Legendaries), and that in the current event banner the ONLY Legendaries that drop are the event Legendaries (which together form a very generous assumption!), the worst-case scenario for getting a Legendary in the current banner is that you get the one you wanted last.
There are currently 13 Legendary items in the Lunar New Year event.
In a worst-case scenario under these highly generous assumptions, getting a desired Legendary item purely by rolling is expected to cost $140 USd.
Your odds of getting a particular desired Legendary improve with each Legendary acquired, and it could be argued that the player will have acquired all this gold and all these other things all those other Legendaries, but it's also the case that Overwatch's retail MSRP is $40 USd.
For all the kerfuffle about horse armor DLC, the expected cost to acquire the horse armor was not literally more than 3x the MSRP of the game.
If lootboxes are gambling, we're going to have to reassess a lot of other things, like Magic cards and football stickers and so on.
And if this palaver about lootboxes actually achieves anything, then we absolutely should treat them the same way.
...Okay. Deal.
I mean, personally I'm of the opinion that you cannot simply use a catch-all rule for everything. Some degree of insight and intent should go into everything, and the rules tweaked as need be. But in the short term, if the only way to regulate lootboxes is to say "Well then we have to regulate all these other things too yup yup" then... okay. Do it.
There's no difference between booster packs and lootboxes, so I don't see the point of painting this as a some kind of acceptable losses scenario.
Actually its completely different. When I buy a pack of magic the gathering cards I receive 14 physical cards, 1 land, and 1 promotional card. These are physical items which I become the whole and complete owner of. If I like my cards, then I may keep them. However, if I do NOT like them, I possess them as physical items. I may return to the gaming shop and sell them there, or sell them online.
In addition, if all I want from the set is a single card, then I can look up the price of that card and purchase it. Or trade with my friends to get it. My control over the physical items makes it fundamentally different from the digital item which does not have the option to sell for real currency or purchase for cash.
If you have lootboxes, and then combine them with a 'fair trade' store where players may trade items either between each other or for items of equal value with the 'game', and also include a cash marketplace where any item in a lootbox may be purchased for real currency then the majority of my issues go away since at that point the only remaining 'functional' lootbox is the 'surprise!' lootbox where all items inside are desirable, and there are no duplicates. The 'surprise!' lootbox is just fine with me. It effectively makes them just a different way to buy DLC for those who like surprises.
I don't agree.
The original point as to why lootboxes are definitely gambling made a comparison to "lotteries at the fair", wherein you pay, something random happens, and you always get "something" and this is gambling. Therefore because you in a lootbox, you pay, something random happens, and you always get something, they're the same.
Which, if we take this comparison as valid, then you can replace the word lootbox with booster pack and it's exactly the same, any differences as to why it's actually not gambling all take place after the fact, so they don't matter.
Gambling is the wagering of money or something of value (referred to as "the stakes") on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning money or material goods. Gambling thus requires three elements be present: consideration, chance and prize.
Consideration: the money spent on the lootbox.
Chance: the randomization factor of the contents of the lootbox.
Prize: The desired drop.
If there is no temptation to throw good money after bad, why do I keep hearing "Oh, I didn't get x skin, guess I'll pay another 10 bucks"
That's not good money after bad.
Have you gambled your rent money away and now desperately trying to win it back with your electric bill money?
that's good money, bad money-situation.
Ok. Simple question: why not sell the exact same items, individually, without any randomness ?
Question before I launch into a diatribe:
Are we distinguishing mobile game gacha from retail game lootboxes?
Because the two are fundamentally very similar, but not exactly the same in a lot of their design considerations due to how they interact with or don't interact with game mechanics, e.g. Overwatch's gameplay is not mechanically driven by what players get from lootboxes, even though the player's desire to play is stimulated by what they get from lootboxes.
For the sake of getting an actual answer, let's limit the question to loot boxes in AAA games.
Why not sell the same items directly, instead of selling them randomly ?
Oh, I'm not going to be nice about them, it's just a question about how assholish I was going to be about them!
It's all about the money.
In the case of the cosmetics in OW:
It's entirely because it makes more money. If you were to take the drop rates as flat, without any pity rate modifiers (e.g. like Fire Emblem Heroes has) or anti-duplicate modifiers (e.g. as OW says that they have, for which I do not know the rate adjustment), then the expected value of a Legendary is 13.5 lootboxes (according to the Chinese OW site). At the most "economical" rate of $40 USd for 50 lootboxes, the expected cost of a single Legendary is $10.80 USd. Given that you aren't guaranteed to get your desired Legendary on your first try and that the anti-duplicate modifier is maximally strong (i.e. you will 100% always get a Legendary you do NOT have until you have all Legendaries), and that in the current event banner the ONLY Legendaries that drop are the event Legendaries (which together form a very generous assumption!), the worst-case scenario for getting a Legendary in the current banner is that you get the one you wanted last.
There are currently 13 Legendary items in the Lunar New Year event.
In a worst-case scenario under these highly generous assumptions, getting a desired Legendary item purely by rolling is expected to cost $140 USd.
Your odds of getting a particular desired Legendary improve with each Legendary acquired, and it could be argued that the player will have acquired all this gold and all these other things all those other Legendaries, but it's also the case that Overwatch's retail MSRP is $40 USd.
For all the kerfuffle about horse armor DLC, the expected cost to acquire the horse armor was not literally more than 3x the MSRP of the game.
Just a note: I think that using "worst case" and "expected value" in a combination looks really funky, especially when statistics adjacent, since EV has a pretty standard meaning.
If there is no temptation to throw good money after bad, why do I keep hearing "Oh, I didn't get x skin, guess I'll pay another 10 bucks"
That's not good money after bad.
Have you gambled your rent money away and now desperately trying to win it back with your electric bill money?
that's good money, bad money-situation.
Ok. Simple question: why not sell the exact same items, individually, without any randomness ?
Question before I launch into a diatribe:
Are we distinguishing mobile game gacha from retail game lootboxes?
Because the two are fundamentally very similar, but not exactly the same in a lot of their design considerations due to how they interact with or don't interact with game mechanics, e.g. Overwatch's gameplay is not mechanically driven by what players get from lootboxes, even though the player's desire to play is stimulated by what they get from lootboxes.
For the sake of getting an actual answer, let's limit the question to loot boxes in AAA games.
Why not sell the same items directly, instead of selling them randomly ?
Oh, I'm not going to be nice about them, it's just a question about how assholish I was going to be about them!
It's all about the money.
In the case of the cosmetics in OW:
It's entirely because it makes more money. If you were to take the drop rates as flat, without any pity rate modifiers (e.g. like Fire Emblem Heroes has) or anti-duplicate modifiers (e.g. as OW says that they have, for which I do not know the rate adjustment), then the expected value of a Legendary is 13.5 lootboxes (according to the Chinese OW site). At the most "economical" rate of $40 USd for 50 lootboxes, the expected cost of a single Legendary is $10.80 USd. Given that you aren't guaranteed to get your desired Legendary on your first try and that the anti-duplicate modifier is maximally strong (i.e. you will 100% always get a Legendary you do NOT have until you have all Legendaries), and that in the current event banner the ONLY Legendaries that drop are the event Legendaries (which together form a very generous assumption!), the worst-case scenario for getting a Legendary in the current banner is that you get the one you wanted last.
There are currently 13 Legendary items in the Lunar New Year event.
In a worst-case scenario under these highly generous assumptions, getting a desired Legendary item purely by rolling is expected to cost $140 USd.
Your odds of getting a particular desired Legendary improve with each Legendary acquired, and it could be argued that the player will have acquired all this gold and all these other things all those other Legendaries, but it's also the case that Overwatch's retail MSRP is $40 USd.
For all the kerfuffle about horse armor DLC, the expected cost to acquire the horse armor was not literally more than 3x the MSRP of the game.
Just a note: I think that using "worst case" and "expected value" in a combination looks really funky, especially when statistics adjacent, since EV has a pretty standard meaning.
I'll check their maths properly when I get home, but yes, the expected value is not the worst case.
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HerrCronIt that wickedly supports taxationRegistered Userregular
If lootboxes are gambling, we're going to have to reassess a lot of other things, like Magic cards and football stickers and so on.
And if this palaver about lootboxes actually achieves anything, then we absolutely should treat them the same way.
...Okay. Deal.
I mean, personally I'm of the opinion that you cannot simply use a catch-all rule for everything. Some degree of insight and intent should go into everything, and the rules tweaked as need be. But in the short term, if the only way to regulate lootboxes is to say "Well then we have to regulate all these other things too yup yup" then... okay. Do it.
There's no difference between booster packs and lootboxes, so I don't see the point of painting this as a some kind of acceptable losses scenario.
Actually its completely different. When I buy a pack of magic the gathering cards I receive 14 physical cards, 1 land, and 1 promotional card. These are physical items which I become the whole and complete owner of. If I like my cards, then I may keep them. However, if I do NOT like them, I possess them as physical items. I may return to the gaming shop and sell them there, or sell them online.
In addition, if all I want from the set is a single card, then I can look up the price of that card and purchase it. Or trade with my friends to get it. My control over the physical items makes it fundamentally different from the digital item which does not have the option to sell for real currency or purchase for cash.
If you have lootboxes, and then combine them with a 'fair trade' store where players may trade items either between each other or for items of equal value with the 'game', and also include a cash marketplace where any item in a lootbox may be purchased for real currency then the majority of my issues go away since at that point the only remaining 'functional' lootbox is the 'surprise!' lootbox where all items inside are desirable, and there are no duplicates. The 'surprise!' lootbox is just fine with me. It effectively makes them just a different way to buy DLC for those who like surprises.
I don't agree.
The original point as to why lootboxes are definitely gambling made a comparison to "lotteries at the fair", wherein you pay, something random happens, and you always get "something" and this is gambling. Therefore because you in a lootbox, you pay, something random happens, and you always get something, they're the same.
Which, if we take this comparison as valid, then you can replace the word lootbox with booster pack and it's exactly the same, any differences as to why it's actually not gambling all take place after the fact, so they don't matter.
Gambling is the wagering of money or something of value (referred to as "the stakes") on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning money or material goods. Gambling thus requires three elements be present: consideration, chance and prize.
Consideration: the money spent on the lootbox.
Chance: the randomization factor of the contents of the lootbox.
Prize: The desired drop.
It's clear-cut gambling.
No, can't say it is.
There is always a prize, no matter what happens. So, without the ability to come away with nothing, which is a key component of gambling, it doesn't fit.
Division of a multiplayer base is unfortunate--but it's not like you couldn't play some games of the original Titanfall on XB1 two years after it came out (prior to the sequel coming out).
It's inconvenient, but not the end of the world. And it's not calculatingly predatory at least.
There's a solution already existing though... Paradox and Starbreeze have proven that expansions don't need to break up the playerbase.
Starbreeze banking on The Walking Dead after posting pre-tax loss of $22.2M
Paradox interactive seems profitable based on their Year of the end reports.
Don't they do mostly single-player and small-scale multiplayer games?*
*Meaning that they don't have continuous huge hosting expenses, like modern FPS, Moba and MMORPG-games do.
You can have large hosting costs without requiring lootboxes. DOTA2 and LoL don't have lootboxes and DOTA2 not only has strictly cosmetic items only available directly, you can even buy/sell them to other people for real money
FPS has stopped doing expansions and just does the yearly releases now anyway
MOBAs don't do expansions and just release new maps and/or heroes, and you might as well give the maps away for free since your money source is in the characters and character cosmetics
MMOs have already solved that - have the expansion get the new content. You could still play WoW and not be current on expansions if you wanted to, you just couldn't get into the new zones
Division of a multiplayer base is unfortunate--but it's not like you couldn't play some games of the original Titanfall on XB1 two years after it came out (prior to the sequel coming out).
It's inconvenient, but not the end of the world. And it's not calculatingly predatory at least.
There's a solution already existing though... Paradox and Starbreeze have proven that expansions don't need to break up the playerbase.
Starbreeze banking on The Walking Dead after posting pre-tax loss of $22.2M
Paradox interactive seems profitable based on their Year of the end reports.
Don't they do mostly single-player and small-scale multiplayer games?*
*Meaning that they don't have continuous huge hosting expenses, like modern FPS, Moba and MMORPG-games do.
Paradox's expansions are...very different. Games like Stellaris certainly get radical updates, and a lot of them, but there is very clearly zero hosting cost on their side (aside from whatever it takes for you to get the game form them). And if you don't have the actual DLC (and not the updated game itself), you don't play multiplayer with those do, as far as I now.
Honestly, Paradox's strategy games seem like an actual-to-goodness "games as service," where after release they are given years and years and years of tuning, with free patches for all players, and with periodic paid DLC to both cover the expenses of continually refining the experience, and also to introduce more mechanics and what-nots to gameplay, to keep long-time players engaged.
However, what works for a grand strategy game might not work so well for all genres of games. By their very nature, most of Paradox's games tend to involve way more player-invested hours than most single-player games could dream of.
If lootboxes are gambling, we're going to have to reassess a lot of other things, like Magic cards and football stickers and so on.
And if this palaver about lootboxes actually achieves anything, then we absolutely should treat them the same way.
...Okay. Deal.
I mean, personally I'm of the opinion that you cannot simply use a catch-all rule for everything. Some degree of insight and intent should go into everything, and the rules tweaked as need be. But in the short term, if the only way to regulate lootboxes is to say "Well then we have to regulate all these other things too yup yup" then... okay. Do it.
There's no difference between booster packs and lootboxes, so I don't see the point of painting this as a some kind of acceptable losses scenario.
Actually its completely different. When I buy a pack of magic the gathering cards I receive 14 physical cards, 1 land, and 1 promotional card. These are physical items which I become the whole and complete owner of. If I like my cards, then I may keep them. However, if I do NOT like them, I possess them as physical items. I may return to the gaming shop and sell them there, or sell them online.
In addition, if all I want from the set is a single card, then I can look up the price of that card and purchase it. Or trade with my friends to get it. My control over the physical items makes it fundamentally different from the digital item which does not have the option to sell for real currency or purchase for cash.
If you have lootboxes, and then combine them with a 'fair trade' store where players may trade items either between each other or for items of equal value with the 'game', and also include a cash marketplace where any item in a lootbox may be purchased for real currency then the majority of my issues go away since at that point the only remaining 'functional' lootbox is the 'surprise!' lootbox where all items inside are desirable, and there are no duplicates. The 'surprise!' lootbox is just fine with me. It effectively makes them just a different way to buy DLC for those who like surprises.
I don't agree.
The original point as to why lootboxes are definitely gambling made a comparison to "lotteries at the fair", wherein you pay, something random happens, and you always get "something" and this is gambling. Therefore because you in a lootbox, you pay, something random happens, and you always get something, they're the same.
Which, if we take this comparison as valid, then you can replace the word lootbox with booster pack and it's exactly the same, any differences as to why it's actually not gambling all take place after the fact, so they don't matter.
Gambling is the wagering of money or something of value (referred to as "the stakes") on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning money or material goods. Gambling thus requires three elements be present: consideration, chance and prize.
Consideration: the money spent on the lootbox.
Chance: the randomization factor of the contents of the lootbox.
Prize: The desired drop.
It's clear-cut gambling.
No, can't say it is.
There is always a prize, no matter what happens. So, without the ability to come away with nothing, which is a key component of gambling, it doesn't fit.
No definition of gambling requires that you be able to come away with nothing. It only requires that there be a result you want and a chance that you don't get that result. If a casino instituted a consolation prize where each failed pull on a slot machine gave you back a penny, it doesn't suddenly become not gambling.
3DS: 0963-0539-4405
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HerrCronIt that wickedly supports taxationRegistered Userregular
edited February 2018
Just as an aside - using LoL (and possibly DotA?) as a yardstick for what you ought to do, at least in terms of revenue, is a pretty bad idea - they're basically an aberration.
Their playerbase is so huge that despite having a very low ARPPU they still make crazy bank, which is cool for them, but it's not something that anyone else can do, unless you can somehow get 70 million players or whatever right out the gate.
HerrCron on
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HerrCronIt that wickedly supports taxationRegistered Userregular
If lootboxes are gambling, we're going to have to reassess a lot of other things, like Magic cards and football stickers and so on.
And if this palaver about lootboxes actually achieves anything, then we absolutely should treat them the same way.
...Okay. Deal.
I mean, personally I'm of the opinion that you cannot simply use a catch-all rule for everything. Some degree of insight and intent should go into everything, and the rules tweaked as need be. But in the short term, if the only way to regulate lootboxes is to say "Well then we have to regulate all these other things too yup yup" then... okay. Do it.
There's no difference between booster packs and lootboxes, so I don't see the point of painting this as a some kind of acceptable losses scenario.
Actually its completely different. When I buy a pack of magic the gathering cards I receive 14 physical cards, 1 land, and 1 promotional card. These are physical items which I become the whole and complete owner of. If I like my cards, then I may keep them. However, if I do NOT like them, I possess them as physical items. I may return to the gaming shop and sell them there, or sell them online.
In addition, if all I want from the set is a single card, then I can look up the price of that card and purchase it. Or trade with my friends to get it. My control over the physical items makes it fundamentally different from the digital item which does not have the option to sell for real currency or purchase for cash.
If you have lootboxes, and then combine them with a 'fair trade' store where players may trade items either between each other or for items of equal value with the 'game', and also include a cash marketplace where any item in a lootbox may be purchased for real currency then the majority of my issues go away since at that point the only remaining 'functional' lootbox is the 'surprise!' lootbox where all items inside are desirable, and there are no duplicates. The 'surprise!' lootbox is just fine with me. It effectively makes them just a different way to buy DLC for those who like surprises.
I don't agree.
The original point as to why lootboxes are definitely gambling made a comparison to "lotteries at the fair", wherein you pay, something random happens, and you always get "something" and this is gambling. Therefore because you in a lootbox, you pay, something random happens, and you always get something, they're the same.
Which, if we take this comparison as valid, then you can replace the word lootbox with booster pack and it's exactly the same, any differences as to why it's actually not gambling all take place after the fact, so they don't matter.
Gambling is the wagering of money or something of value (referred to as "the stakes") on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning money or material goods. Gambling thus requires three elements be present: consideration, chance and prize.
Consideration: the money spent on the lootbox.
Chance: the randomization factor of the contents of the lootbox.
Prize: The desired drop.
It's clear-cut gambling.
No, can't say it is.
There is always a prize, no matter what happens. So, without the ability to come away with nothing, which is a key component of gambling, it doesn't fit.
No definition of gambling requires that you be able to come away with nothing. It only requires that there be a result you want and a chance that you don't get that result. If a casino instituted a consolation prize where each failed pull on a slot machine gave you back a penny, it doesn't suddenly become not gambling.
With a lootbox when you get one, you'll get four (or whatever) items, and you'll always get four items, there's no change ever.
There's a consistent 'prize' being given.
If lootboxes are gambling, we're going to have to reassess a lot of other things, like Magic cards and football stickers and so on.
And if this palaver about lootboxes actually achieves anything, then we absolutely should treat them the same way.
...Okay. Deal.
I mean, personally I'm of the opinion that you cannot simply use a catch-all rule for everything. Some degree of insight and intent should go into everything, and the rules tweaked as need be. But in the short term, if the only way to regulate lootboxes is to say "Well then we have to regulate all these other things too yup yup" then... okay. Do it.
There's no difference between booster packs and lootboxes, so I don't see the point of painting this as a some kind of acceptable losses scenario.
Actually its completely different. When I buy a pack of magic the gathering cards I receive 14 physical cards, 1 land, and 1 promotional card. These are physical items which I become the whole and complete owner of. If I like my cards, then I may keep them. However, if I do NOT like them, I possess them as physical items. I may return to the gaming shop and sell them there, or sell them online.
In addition, if all I want from the set is a single card, then I can look up the price of that card and purchase it. Or trade with my friends to get it. My control over the physical items makes it fundamentally different from the digital item which does not have the option to sell for real currency or purchase for cash.
If you have lootboxes, and then combine them with a 'fair trade' store where players may trade items either between each other or for items of equal value with the 'game', and also include a cash marketplace where any item in a lootbox may be purchased for real currency then the majority of my issues go away since at that point the only remaining 'functional' lootbox is the 'surprise!' lootbox where all items inside are desirable, and there are no duplicates. The 'surprise!' lootbox is just fine with me. It effectively makes them just a different way to buy DLC for those who like surprises.
I don't agree.
The original point as to why lootboxes are definitely gambling made a comparison to "lotteries at the fair", wherein you pay, something random happens, and you always get "something" and this is gambling. Therefore because you in a lootbox, you pay, something random happens, and you always get something, they're the same.
Which, if we take this comparison as valid, then you can replace the word lootbox with booster pack and it's exactly the same, any differences as to why it's actually not gambling all take place after the fact, so they don't matter.
Gambling is the wagering of money or something of value (referred to as "the stakes") on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning money or material goods. Gambling thus requires three elements be present: consideration, chance and prize.
Consideration: the money spent on the lootbox.
Chance: the randomization factor of the contents of the lootbox.
Prize: The desired drop.
It's clear-cut gambling.
No, can't say it is.
There is always a prize, no matter what happens. So, without the ability to come away with nothing, which is a key component of gambling, it doesn't fit.
No definition of gambling requires that you be able to come away with nothing. It only requires that there be a result you want and a chance that you don't get that result. If a casino instituted a consolation prize where each failed pull on a slot machine gave you back a penny, it doesn't suddenly become not gambling.
With a lootbox when you get one, you'll get four (or whatever) items, and you'll always get four items, there's no change ever.
There's a consistent 'prize' being given.
I cannot see how this is gambling.
One of them might be Legendary! But it probably won't be.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
If lootboxes are gambling, we're going to have to reassess a lot of other things, like Magic cards and football stickers and so on.
And if this palaver about lootboxes actually achieves anything, then we absolutely should treat them the same way.
...Okay. Deal.
I mean, personally I'm of the opinion that you cannot simply use a catch-all rule for everything. Some degree of insight and intent should go into everything, and the rules tweaked as need be. But in the short term, if the only way to regulate lootboxes is to say "Well then we have to regulate all these other things too yup yup" then... okay. Do it.
There's no difference between booster packs and lootboxes, so I don't see the point of painting this as a some kind of acceptable losses scenario.
Actually its completely different. When I buy a pack of magic the gathering cards I receive 14 physical cards, 1 land, and 1 promotional card. These are physical items which I become the whole and complete owner of. If I like my cards, then I may keep them. However, if I do NOT like them, I possess them as physical items. I may return to the gaming shop and sell them there, or sell them online.
In addition, if all I want from the set is a single card, then I can look up the price of that card and purchase it. Or trade with my friends to get it. My control over the physical items makes it fundamentally different from the digital item which does not have the option to sell for real currency or purchase for cash.
If you have lootboxes, and then combine them with a 'fair trade' store where players may trade items either between each other or for items of equal value with the 'game', and also include a cash marketplace where any item in a lootbox may be purchased for real currency then the majority of my issues go away since at that point the only remaining 'functional' lootbox is the 'surprise!' lootbox where all items inside are desirable, and there are no duplicates. The 'surprise!' lootbox is just fine with me. It effectively makes them just a different way to buy DLC for those who like surprises.
I don't agree.
The original point as to why lootboxes are definitely gambling made a comparison to "lotteries at the fair", wherein you pay, something random happens, and you always get "something" and this is gambling. Therefore because you in a lootbox, you pay, something random happens, and you always get something, they're the same.
Which, if we take this comparison as valid, then you can replace the word lootbox with booster pack and it's exactly the same, any differences as to why it's actually not gambling all take place after the fact, so they don't matter.
Gambling is the wagering of money or something of value (referred to as "the stakes") on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning money or material goods. Gambling thus requires three elements be present: consideration, chance and prize.
Consideration: the money spent on the lootbox.
Chance: the randomization factor of the contents of the lootbox.
Prize: The desired drop.
It's clear-cut gambling.
No, can't say it is.
There is always a prize, no matter what happens. So, without the ability to come away with nothing, which is a key component of gambling, it doesn't fit.
No definition of gambling requires that you be able to come away with nothing. It only requires that there be a result you want and a chance that you don't get that result. If a casino instituted a consolation prize where each failed pull on a slot machine gave you back a penny, it doesn't suddenly become not gambling.
With a lootbox when you get one, you'll get four (or whatever) items, and you'll always get four items, there's no change ever.
There's a consistent 'prize' being given.
I cannot see how this is gambling.
The different items have different values to the player, and different values to different players, and cannot be traded between players to normalize those values.
I may only want The Enchanted Fish, so effectively loot boxes either contain the fish, or they contain nothing.
If lootboxes are gambling, we're going to have to reassess a lot of other things, like Magic cards and football stickers and so on.
And if this palaver about lootboxes actually achieves anything, then we absolutely should treat them the same way.
...Okay. Deal.
I mean, personally I'm of the opinion that you cannot simply use a catch-all rule for everything. Some degree of insight and intent should go into everything, and the rules tweaked as need be. But in the short term, if the only way to regulate lootboxes is to say "Well then we have to regulate all these other things too yup yup" then... okay. Do it.
There's no difference between booster packs and lootboxes, so I don't see the point of painting this as a some kind of acceptable losses scenario.
Actually its completely different. When I buy a pack of magic the gathering cards I receive 14 physical cards, 1 land, and 1 promotional card. These are physical items which I become the whole and complete owner of. If I like my cards, then I may keep them. However, if I do NOT like them, I possess them as physical items. I may return to the gaming shop and sell them there, or sell them online.
In addition, if all I want from the set is a single card, then I can look up the price of that card and purchase it. Or trade with my friends to get it. My control over the physical items makes it fundamentally different from the digital item which does not have the option to sell for real currency or purchase for cash.
If you have lootboxes, and then combine them with a 'fair trade' store where players may trade items either between each other or for items of equal value with the 'game', and also include a cash marketplace where any item in a lootbox may be purchased for real currency then the majority of my issues go away since at that point the only remaining 'functional' lootbox is the 'surprise!' lootbox where all items inside are desirable, and there are no duplicates. The 'surprise!' lootbox is just fine with me. It effectively makes them just a different way to buy DLC for those who like surprises.
I don't agree.
The original point as to why lootboxes are definitely gambling made a comparison to "lotteries at the fair", wherein you pay, something random happens, and you always get "something" and this is gambling. Therefore because you in a lootbox, you pay, something random happens, and you always get something, they're the same.
Which, if we take this comparison as valid, then you can replace the word lootbox with booster pack and it's exactly the same, any differences as to why it's actually not gambling all take place after the fact, so they don't matter.
Gambling is the wagering of money or something of value (referred to as "the stakes") on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning money or material goods. Gambling thus requires three elements be present: consideration, chance and prize.
Consideration: the money spent on the lootbox.
Chance: the randomization factor of the contents of the lootbox.
Prize: The desired drop.
It's clear-cut gambling.
No, can't say it is.
There is always a prize, no matter what happens. So, without the ability to come away with nothing, which is a key component of gambling, it doesn't fit.
Legal definition of gambling according to federal law
(1) Bet or wager.—The term “bet or wager”—
(A) means the staking or risking by any person of something of value upon the outcome of a contest of others, a sporting event, or a game subject to chance, upon an agreement or understanding that the person or another person will receive something of value in the event of a certain outcome;
(B) includes the purchase of a chance or opportunity to win a lottery or other prize (which opportunity to win is predominantly subject to chance);
(C) includes any scheme of a type described in section 3702 of title 28;
(D) includes any instructions or information pertaining to the establishment or movement of funds by the bettor or customer in, to, or from an account with the business of betting or wagering;
Doesn't say anything about not getting anything in return. Hell subsection (B) describes the lootbox pretty well, since it is a lottery.
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HerrCronIt that wickedly supports taxationRegistered Userregular
If lootboxes are gambling, we're going to have to reassess a lot of other things, like Magic cards and football stickers and so on.
And if this palaver about lootboxes actually achieves anything, then we absolutely should treat them the same way.
...Okay. Deal.
I mean, personally I'm of the opinion that you cannot simply use a catch-all rule for everything. Some degree of insight and intent should go into everything, and the rules tweaked as need be. But in the short term, if the only way to regulate lootboxes is to say "Well then we have to regulate all these other things too yup yup" then... okay. Do it.
There's no difference between booster packs and lootboxes, so I don't see the point of painting this as a some kind of acceptable losses scenario.
Actually its completely different. When I buy a pack of magic the gathering cards I receive 14 physical cards, 1 land, and 1 promotional card. These are physical items which I become the whole and complete owner of. If I like my cards, then I may keep them. However, if I do NOT like them, I possess them as physical items. I may return to the gaming shop and sell them there, or sell them online.
In addition, if all I want from the set is a single card, then I can look up the price of that card and purchase it. Or trade with my friends to get it. My control over the physical items makes it fundamentally different from the digital item which does not have the option to sell for real currency or purchase for cash.
If you have lootboxes, and then combine them with a 'fair trade' store where players may trade items either between each other or for items of equal value with the 'game', and also include a cash marketplace where any item in a lootbox may be purchased for real currency then the majority of my issues go away since at that point the only remaining 'functional' lootbox is the 'surprise!' lootbox where all items inside are desirable, and there are no duplicates. The 'surprise!' lootbox is just fine with me. It effectively makes them just a different way to buy DLC for those who like surprises.
I don't agree.
The original point as to why lootboxes are definitely gambling made a comparison to "lotteries at the fair", wherein you pay, something random happens, and you always get "something" and this is gambling. Therefore because you in a lootbox, you pay, something random happens, and you always get something, they're the same.
Which, if we take this comparison as valid, then you can replace the word lootbox with booster pack and it's exactly the same, any differences as to why it's actually not gambling all take place after the fact, so they don't matter.
Gambling is the wagering of money or something of value (referred to as "the stakes") on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning money or material goods. Gambling thus requires three elements be present: consideration, chance and prize.
Consideration: the money spent on the lootbox.
Chance: the randomization factor of the contents of the lootbox.
Prize: The desired drop.
It's clear-cut gambling.
No, can't say it is.
There is always a prize, no matter what happens. So, without the ability to come away with nothing, which is a key component of gambling, it doesn't fit.
No definition of gambling requires that you be able to come away with nothing. It only requires that there be a result you want and a chance that you don't get that result. If a casino instituted a consolation prize where each failed pull on a slot machine gave you back a penny, it doesn't suddenly become not gambling.
With a lootbox when you get one, you'll get four (or whatever) items, and you'll always get four items, there's no change ever.
There's a consistent 'prize' being given.
I cannot see how this is gambling.
The different items have different values to the player, and different values to different players, and cannot be traded between players to normalize those values.
I may only want The Enchanted Fish, so effectively loot boxes either contain the fish, or they contain nothing.
But they clearly do not contain nothing, so i'm a bit sceptical of this line of reasoning.
I've certainly gotten legendary skins for characters I cannot play but that's still a prize, i'd be lying if i said otherwise.
If lootboxes are gambling, we're going to have to reassess a lot of other things, like Magic cards and football stickers and so on.
And if this palaver about lootboxes actually achieves anything, then we absolutely should treat them the same way.
...Okay. Deal.
I mean, personally I'm of the opinion that you cannot simply use a catch-all rule for everything. Some degree of insight and intent should go into everything, and the rules tweaked as need be. But in the short term, if the only way to regulate lootboxes is to say "Well then we have to regulate all these other things too yup yup" then... okay. Do it.
There's no difference between booster packs and lootboxes, so I don't see the point of painting this as a some kind of acceptable losses scenario.
Actually its completely different. When I buy a pack of magic the gathering cards I receive 14 physical cards, 1 land, and 1 promotional card. These are physical items which I become the whole and complete owner of. If I like my cards, then I may keep them. However, if I do NOT like them, I possess them as physical items. I may return to the gaming shop and sell them there, or sell them online.
In addition, if all I want from the set is a single card, then I can look up the price of that card and purchase it. Or trade with my friends to get it. My control over the physical items makes it fundamentally different from the digital item which does not have the option to sell for real currency or purchase for cash.
If you have lootboxes, and then combine them with a 'fair trade' store where players may trade items either between each other or for items of equal value with the 'game', and also include a cash marketplace where any item in a lootbox may be purchased for real currency then the majority of my issues go away since at that point the only remaining 'functional' lootbox is the 'surprise!' lootbox where all items inside are desirable, and there are no duplicates. The 'surprise!' lootbox is just fine with me. It effectively makes them just a different way to buy DLC for those who like surprises.
I don't agree.
The original point as to why lootboxes are definitely gambling made a comparison to "lotteries at the fair", wherein you pay, something random happens, and you always get "something" and this is gambling. Therefore because you in a lootbox, you pay, something random happens, and you always get something, they're the same.
Which, if we take this comparison as valid, then you can replace the word lootbox with booster pack and it's exactly the same, any differences as to why it's actually not gambling all take place after the fact, so they don't matter.
Gambling is the wagering of money or something of value (referred to as "the stakes") on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning money or material goods. Gambling thus requires three elements be present: consideration, chance and prize.
Consideration: the money spent on the lootbox.
Chance: the randomization factor of the contents of the lootbox.
Prize: The desired drop.
It's clear-cut gambling.
No, can't say it is.
There is always a prize, no matter what happens. So, without the ability to come away with nothing, which is a key component of gambling, it doesn't fit.
No definition of gambling requires that you be able to come away with nothing. It only requires that there be a result you want and a chance that you don't get that result. If a casino instituted a consolation prize where each failed pull on a slot machine gave you back a penny, it doesn't suddenly become not gambling.
With a lootbox when you get one, you'll get four (or whatever) items, and you'll always get four items, there's no change ever.
There's a consistent 'prize' being given.
I cannot see how this is gambling.
The different items have different values to the player, and different values to different players, and cannot be traded between players to normalize those values.
I may only want The Enchanted Fish, so effectively loot boxes either contain the fish, or they contain nothing.
But they clearly do not contain nothing, so i'm a bit sceptical of this line of reasoning.
I've certainly gotten legendary skins for characters I cannot play but that's still a prize, i'd be lying if i said otherwise.
And what people are saying is that, if you never use a prize, it might as well not exist if it cannot be resold or traded in. In the example case, a consumer bought a loot box and got nothing that would be used from it.
That is not functionally different from getting an empty box, is the logic in place.
If a consumer were trying to get a specific legendary for a specific character, would they be likely to not buy another lootbox because they got a prize, even if it's not the one they wanted and will (in all likelihood) never use it?
A casino brings in a new slot machine. The machine contains 10,000 signed checks. One check is for $1,000,000, and the rest are for $0.01, but the machine will always spit out 4 checks.
Now, if you could actually trade Overwatch drops on a marketplace between players, then every drop you get is worth something, potentially.
But that makes it that much closer to explicitly being "valuables" which is something I'm sure Blizzard doesn't want regulators looking at too closely.
Also, isn't it possible that you can get "duplicates" of whatever you already have? So theoretically you could get a Legendary skin drop... but it's the one you already had!
If there is no temptation to throw good money after bad, why do I keep hearing "Oh, I didn't get x skin, guess I'll pay another 10 bucks"
That's not good money after bad.
Have you gambled your rent money away and now desperately trying to win it back with your electric bill money?
that's good money, bad money-situation.
Ok. Simple question: why not sell the exact same items, individually, without any randomness ?
Question before I launch into a diatribe:
Are we distinguishing mobile game gacha from retail game lootboxes?
Because the two are fundamentally very similar, but not exactly the same in a lot of their design considerations due to how they interact with or don't interact with game mechanics, e.g. Overwatch's gameplay is not mechanically driven by what players get from lootboxes, even though the player's desire to play is stimulated by what they get from lootboxes.
For the sake of getting an actual answer, let's limit the question to loot boxes in AAA games.
Why not sell the same items directly, instead of selling them randomly ?
Oh, I'm not going to be nice about them, it's just a question about how assholish I was going to be about them!
It's all about the money.
In the case of the cosmetics in OW:
It's entirely because it makes more money. If you were to take the drop rates as flat, without any pity rate modifiers (e.g. like Fire Emblem Heroes has) or anti-duplicate modifiers (e.g. as OW says that they have, for which I do not know the rate adjustment), then the expected value of a Legendary is 13.5 lootboxes (according to the Chinese OW site). At the most "economical" rate of $40 USd for 50 lootboxes, the expected cost of a single Legendary is $10.80 USd. Given that you aren't guaranteed to get your desired Legendary on your first try and that the anti-duplicate modifier is maximally strong (i.e. you will 100% always get a Legendary you do NOT have until you have all Legendaries), and that in the current event banner the ONLY Legendaries that drop are the event Legendaries (which together form a very generous assumption!), the worst-case scenario for getting a Legendary in the current banner is that you get the one you wanted last.
There are currently 13 Legendary items in the Lunar New Year event.
In a worst-case scenario under these highly generous assumptions, getting a desired Legendary item purely by rolling is expected to cost $140 USd.
Your odds of getting a particular desired Legendary improve with each Legendary acquired, and it could be argued that the player will have acquired all this gold and all these other things all those other Legendaries, but it's also the case that Overwatch's retail MSRP is $40 USd.
For all the kerfuffle about horse armor DLC, the expected cost to acquire the horse armor was not literally more than 3x the MSRP of the game.
Just a note: I think that using "worst case" and "expected value" in a combination looks really funky, especially when statistics adjacent, since EV has a pretty standard meaning.
I'll check their maths properly when I get home, but yes, the expected value is not the worst case.
I'm operating on just a few hours of sleep, so I apologize if I've mixed them in a funky way. Do correct me!
If there is no temptation to throw good money after bad, why do I keep hearing "Oh, I didn't get x skin, guess I'll pay another 10 bucks"
That's not good money after bad.
Have you gambled your rent money away and now desperately trying to win it back with your electric bill money?
that's good money, bad money-situation.
Ok. Simple question: why not sell the exact same items, individually, without any randomness ?
Question before I launch into a diatribe:
Are we distinguishing mobile game gacha from retail game lootboxes?
Because the two are fundamentally very similar, but not exactly the same in a lot of their design considerations due to how they interact with or don't interact with game mechanics, e.g. Overwatch's gameplay is not mechanically driven by what players get from lootboxes, even though the player's desire to play is stimulated by what they get from lootboxes.
For the sake of getting an actual answer, let's limit the question to loot boxes in AAA games.
Why not sell the same items directly, instead of selling them randomly ?
Oh, I'm not going to be nice about them, it's just a question about how assholish I was going to be about them!
It's all about the money.
In the case of the cosmetics in OW:
It's entirely because it makes more money. If you were to take the drop rates as flat, without any pity rate modifiers (e.g. like Fire Emblem Heroes has) or anti-duplicate modifiers (e.g. as OW says that they have, for which I do not know the rate adjustment), then the expected value of a Legendary is 13.5 lootboxes (according to the Chinese OW site). At the most "economical" rate of $40 USd for 50 lootboxes, the expected cost of a single Legendary is $10.80 USd. Given that you aren't guaranteed to get your desired Legendary on your first try and that the anti-duplicate modifier is maximally strong (i.e. you will 100% always get a Legendary you do NOT have until you have all Legendaries), and that in the current event banner the ONLY Legendaries that drop are the event Legendaries (which together form a very generous assumption!), the worst-case scenario for getting a Legendary in the current banner is that you get the one you wanted last.
There are currently 13 Legendary items in the Lunar New Year event.
In a worst-case scenario under these highly generous assumptions, getting a desired Legendary item purely by rolling is expected to cost $140 USd.
Your odds of getting a particular desired Legendary improve with each Legendary acquired, and it could be argued that the player will have acquired all this gold and all these other things all those other Legendaries, but it's also the case that Overwatch's retail MSRP is $40 USd.
For all the kerfuffle about horse armor DLC, the expected cost to acquire the horse armor was not literally more than 3x the MSRP of the game.
Just a note: I think that using "worst case" and "expected value" in a combination looks really funky, especially when statistics adjacent, since EV has a pretty standard meaning.
I'll check their maths properly when I get home, but yes, the expected value is not the worst case.
I'm operating on just a few hours of sleep, so I apologize if I've mixed them in a funky way. Do correct me!
I did not notice any actual mistakes, it's more that I can get the expected value of an item under a few different scenarios once I get home.
At which point, the question becomes "why would players object to paying that directly, since that's what they are already paying, on average?"
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HerrCronIt that wickedly supports taxationRegistered Userregular
Now, if you could actually trade Overwatch drops on a marketplace between players, then every drop you get is worth something, potentially.
But that makes it that much closer to explicitly being "valuables" which is something I'm sure Blizzard doesn't want regulators looking at too closely.
Also, isn't it possible that you can get "duplicates" of whatever you already have? So theoretically you could get a Legendary skin drop... but it's the one you already had!
Dupes do convert into in game cash though, so you can buy that S76 skin once you rack up enough of them.
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HerrCronIt that wickedly supports taxationRegistered Userregular
If lootboxes are gambling, we're going to have to reassess a lot of other things, like Magic cards and football stickers and so on.
And if this palaver about lootboxes actually achieves anything, then we absolutely should treat them the same way.
...Okay. Deal.
I mean, personally I'm of the opinion that you cannot simply use a catch-all rule for everything. Some degree of insight and intent should go into everything, and the rules tweaked as need be. But in the short term, if the only way to regulate lootboxes is to say "Well then we have to regulate all these other things too yup yup" then... okay. Do it.
There's no difference between booster packs and lootboxes, so I don't see the point of painting this as a some kind of acceptable losses scenario.
Actually its completely different. When I buy a pack of magic the gathering cards I receive 14 physical cards, 1 land, and 1 promotional card. These are physical items which I become the whole and complete owner of. If I like my cards, then I may keep them. However, if I do NOT like them, I possess them as physical items. I may return to the gaming shop and sell them there, or sell them online.
In addition, if all I want from the set is a single card, then I can look up the price of that card and purchase it. Or trade with my friends to get it. My control over the physical items makes it fundamentally different from the digital item which does not have the option to sell for real currency or purchase for cash.
If you have lootboxes, and then combine them with a 'fair trade' store where players may trade items either between each other or for items of equal value with the 'game', and also include a cash marketplace where any item in a lootbox may be purchased for real currency then the majority of my issues go away since at that point the only remaining 'functional' lootbox is the 'surprise!' lootbox where all items inside are desirable, and there are no duplicates. The 'surprise!' lootbox is just fine with me. It effectively makes them just a different way to buy DLC for those who like surprises.
I don't agree.
The original point as to why lootboxes are definitely gambling made a comparison to "lotteries at the fair", wherein you pay, something random happens, and you always get "something" and this is gambling. Therefore because you in a lootbox, you pay, something random happens, and you always get something, they're the same.
Which, if we take this comparison as valid, then you can replace the word lootbox with booster pack and it's exactly the same, any differences as to why it's actually not gambling all take place after the fact, so they don't matter.
Gambling is the wagering of money or something of value (referred to as "the stakes") on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning money or material goods. Gambling thus requires three elements be present: consideration, chance and prize.
Consideration: the money spent on the lootbox.
Chance: the randomization factor of the contents of the lootbox.
Prize: The desired drop.
It's clear-cut gambling.
No, can't say it is.
There is always a prize, no matter what happens. So, without the ability to come away with nothing, which is a key component of gambling, it doesn't fit.
No definition of gambling requires that you be able to come away with nothing. It only requires that there be a result you want and a chance that you don't get that result. If a casino instituted a consolation prize where each failed pull on a slot machine gave you back a penny, it doesn't suddenly become not gambling.
With a lootbox when you get one, you'll get four (or whatever) items, and you'll always get four items, there's no change ever.
There's a consistent 'prize' being given.
I cannot see how this is gambling.
The different items have different values to the player, and different values to different players, and cannot be traded between players to normalize those values.
I may only want The Enchanted Fish, so effectively loot boxes either contain the fish, or they contain nothing.
But they clearly do not contain nothing, so i'm a bit sceptical of this line of reasoning.
I've certainly gotten legendary skins for characters I cannot play but that's still a prize, i'd be lying if i said otherwise.
And what people are saying is that, if you never use a prize, it might as well not exist if it cannot be resold or traded in. In the example case, a consumer bought a loot box and got nothing that would be used from it.
That is not functionally different from getting an empty box, is the logic in place.
If a consumer were trying to get a specific legendary for a specific character, would they be likely to not buy another lootbox because they got a prize, even if it's not the one they wanted and will (in all likelihood) never use it?
Ok, I see what you're saying, but it puts me to thinking - does that mean that if they change their minds later and decide to main let's say, Ana, for a bit do those empty boxes with skins and sprays for her retroactively become not-empty?
And do previously not empty boxes become empty if you suddenly decide that you've got more respect for yourself and will no longer pick Hanzo?
Now, if you could actually trade Overwatch drops on a marketplace between players, then every drop you get is worth something, potentially.
But that makes it that much closer to explicitly being "valuables" which is something I'm sure Blizzard doesn't want regulators looking at too closely.
Also, isn't it possible that you can get "duplicates" of whatever you already have? So theoretically you could get a Legendary skin drop... but it's the one you already had!
Dupes do convert into in game cash though, so you can buy that S76 skin once you rack up enough of them.
Do they convert into an equivalent amount though? Like, do you receive more based on the rarity of the dupe?
Now, if you could actually trade Overwatch drops on a marketplace between players, then every drop you get is worth something, potentially.
But that makes it that much closer to explicitly being "valuables" which is something I'm sure Blizzard doesn't want regulators looking at too closely.
Also, isn't it possible that you can get "duplicates" of whatever you already have? So theoretically you could get a Legendary skin drop... but it's the one you already had!
Dupes do convert into in game cash though, so you can buy that S76 skin once you rack up enough of them.
Do they convert into an equivalent amount though? Like, do you receive more based on the rarity of the dupe?
Why have dupes in the first place?
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HerrCronIt that wickedly supports taxationRegistered Userregular
Now, if you could actually trade Overwatch drops on a marketplace between players, then every drop you get is worth something, potentially.
But that makes it that much closer to explicitly being "valuables" which is something I'm sure Blizzard doesn't want regulators looking at too closely.
Also, isn't it possible that you can get "duplicates" of whatever you already have? So theoretically you could get a Legendary skin drop... but it's the one you already had!
Dupes do convert into in game cash though, so you can buy that S76 skin once you rack up enough of them.
Do they convert into an equivalent amount though? Like, do you receive more based on the rarity of the dupe?
Now, if you could actually trade Overwatch drops on a marketplace between players, then every drop you get is worth something, potentially.
But that makes it that much closer to explicitly being "valuables" which is something I'm sure Blizzard doesn't want regulators looking at too closely.
Also, isn't it possible that you can get "duplicates" of whatever you already have? So theoretically you could get a Legendary skin drop... but it's the one you already had!
Dupes do convert into in game cash though, so you can buy that S76 skin once you rack up enough of them.
Do they convert into an equivalent amount though? Like, do you receive more based on the rarity of the dupe?
Why have dupes in the first place?
Dupes have two purposes - pad out the number of available drops, which decreases the chances of getting the desired item, and granting the player some token amount of FunBux, encouraging the next lootbox purchase. It's a very slick system.
In May 2012, an article was published in a famous conservative Japanese newspaper called Yomiuri Shimbun that criticized social networking games, specifically gacha, for exploiting the naivety of children to make a profit. The main complaint of the article was that the Gacha model too closely resembled gambling. The article called for an investigation by Japan's Consumer Affairs Agency to prevent abuse of the system.[15] Shortly after, the suggested investigation was performed and the model of complete gacha was declared illegal by the Consumer Affairs Agency, citing the Law for Preventing Unjustifiable Extras or Unexpected Benefit and Misleading Representation (不当景品類及び不当表示防止法),[9] [10] This was done not by introducing any new legislation, but by issuing a legal opinion that virtual items could be considered "prizes" under existing legislation written in 1977 to prevent the complete gacha practice in the context of baseball trading cards. Within a month of the opinion being issued, all major Japanese game publishers had removed complete gacha rules from their games, though many developers found ways around these rules.[11][16] Japanese mobile game developers, including GREE and DeNA, worked to establish a self-regulating industry group, the Japan Social Game Association, which was an attempt to coerce developers from these models, but it did not prove successful, and the Association was disbanded by 2015.[16]
The mechanism has come under scrutiny for its similarity to gambling, and some countries require drop rates to be made public, or have banned certain practices (e.g., complete gacha).[17][18] Many players also feel regret after making purchases in these games according to a survey.[19] This type of game has also come under criticism for luring players into spending thousands of dollars at a time to get what they want,[20] and the way gacha outcomes are presented within the game have also been criticized.[21]
Except their implementation in games in the west more closely matches implementation of pachinko.
In pachinko, when a player's ball makes it into a special hole to activate the slot machine and a jackpot is made, they are rewarded with more balls. Players can then exchange the balls for prizes of different value at a booth in the parlour. Money cannot be awarded at pachinko parlors as this would be in violation of the criminal code. However, players almost always exchange pachinko balls for special tokens, usually slits of gold encased in plastic, and then "sell" them at a neighboring shop for cash. Usually such shops are also owned by the parlor operators, but as long as the winners do not receive cash in the parlour, the law is not broken.
Replace "special token" with "skin your character can wear" and you've got the exact same thing. So they're "not gambling" in the sense that pachinko parlors are "not gambling" in the exact way that they've been designed to specifically circumvent gambling laws.
Dupes have two purposes - pad out the number of available drops, which decreases the chances of getting the desired item, and granting the player some token amount of FunBux, encouraging the next lootbox purchase. It's a very slick system.
Yep. The primary purpose of dupes is to make sure your chances to win don't actually go up as you spend money. If you had zero dupes, a player willing to spend a bunch of money could be quite certain of getting everything. In a gacha/lootbox system, though, people can easily spend 300 dollars on rolling the gacha and NOT get the thing they wanted. Which is the entire reason for the booster pack model in the first place!
If there is no temptation to throw good money after bad, why do I keep hearing "Oh, I didn't get x skin, guess I'll pay another 10 bucks"
That's not good money after bad.
Have you gambled your rent money away and now desperately trying to win it back with your electric bill money?
that's good money, bad money-situation.
Ok. Simple question: why not sell the exact same items, individually, without any randomness ?
Question before I launch into a diatribe:
Are we distinguishing mobile game gacha from retail game lootboxes?
Because the two are fundamentally very similar, but not exactly the same in a lot of their design considerations due to how they interact with or don't interact with game mechanics, e.g. Overwatch's gameplay is not mechanically driven by what players get from lootboxes, even though the player's desire to play is stimulated by what they get from lootboxes.
For the sake of getting an actual answer, let's limit the question to loot boxes in AAA games.
Why not sell the same items directly, instead of selling them randomly ?
Oh, I'm not going to be nice about them, it's just a question about how assholish I was going to be about them!
It's all about the money.
In the case of the cosmetics in OW:
It's entirely because it makes more money. If you were to take the drop rates as flat, without any pity rate modifiers (e.g. like Fire Emblem Heroes has) or anti-duplicate modifiers (e.g. as OW says that they have, for which I do not know the rate adjustment), then the expected value of a Legendary is 13.5 lootboxes (according to the Chinese OW site). At the most "economical" rate of $40 USd for 50 lootboxes, the expected cost of a single Legendary is $10.80 USd. Given that you aren't guaranteed to get your desired Legendary on your first try and that the anti-duplicate modifier is maximally strong (i.e. you will 100% always get a Legendary you do NOT have until you have all Legendaries), and that in the current event banner the ONLY Legendaries that drop are the event Legendaries (which together form a very generous assumption!), the worst-case scenario for getting a Legendary in the current banner is that you get the one you wanted last.
There are currently 13 Legendary items in the Lunar New Year event.
In a worst-case scenario under these highly generous assumptions, getting a desired Legendary item purely by rolling is expected to cost $140 USd.
Your odds of getting a particular desired Legendary improve with each Legendary acquired, and it could be argued that the player will have acquired all this gold and all these other things all those other Legendaries, but it's also the case that Overwatch's retail MSRP is $40 USd.
For all the kerfuffle about horse armor DLC, the expected cost to acquire the horse armor was not literally more than 3x the MSRP of the game.
Just a note: I think that using "worst case" and "expected value" in a combination looks really funky, especially when statistics adjacent, since EV has a pretty standard meaning.
I'll check their maths properly when I get home, but yes, the expected value is not the worst case.
I'm operating on just a few hours of sleep, so I apologize if I've mixed them in a funky way. Do correct me!
Your math is correct.
So, with 13 legendary skins, and a system ensuring that a player never get a duplicated skin, and assuming that every loot box contains one legendary skin, on average, it would takes 7 loot boxes to get that skin.
If there's no replacement, and we assumes that the duplicate skins are worthless (to simplify), it would indeed takes about 13 loot boxes, on average, with a median of 9.
I think it's possible to deal with the case where duplicates have some value, using a Markov chain, but that would take some time and would not be that informative.
So, given that players are willing to pay about 20$ per skin, why would they object to paying that directly ?
They get to spend less time opening boxes, and they have less transactions to do.
The publisher would be making more money, since they avoid controversy and they do not have to program a random-box-opening screen (as well as a good RNG, for that matter).
That would be win-win.
Dupes have two purposes - pad out the number of available drops, which decreases the chances of getting the desired item, and granting the player some token amount of FunBux, encouraging the next lootbox purchase. It's a very slick system.
Yep. The primary purpose of dupes is to make sure your chances to win don't actually go up as you spend money. If you had zero dupes, a player willing to spend a bunch of money could be quite certain of getting everything. In a gacha/lootbox system, though, people can easily spend 300 dollars on rolling the gacha and NOT get the thing they wanted. Which is the entire reason for the booster pack model in the first place!
Which happens a ton in gacha games. On the various Reddits for those games when the special rolling events come around you'll see picture after picture of someone rolling 5+ of a different ultra rare card they already have before they rolled even 1 of the ultra rare card they actually want. Bonus points if despite being the "same" level of rarity one card has drastically lower odds than the other but the game doesn't tell you that.
If lootboxes are gambling, we're going to have to reassess a lot of other things, like Magic cards and football stickers and so on.
And if this palaver about lootboxes actually achieves anything, then we absolutely should treat them the same way.
...Okay. Deal.
I mean, personally I'm of the opinion that you cannot simply use a catch-all rule for everything. Some degree of insight and intent should go into everything, and the rules tweaked as need be. But in the short term, if the only way to regulate lootboxes is to say "Well then we have to regulate all these other things too yup yup" then... okay. Do it.
There's no difference between booster packs and lootboxes, so I don't see the point of painting this as a some kind of acceptable losses scenario.
Actually its completely different. When I buy a pack of magic the gathering cards I receive 14 physical cards, 1 land, and 1 promotional card. These are physical items which I become the whole and complete owner of. If I like my cards, then I may keep them. However, if I do NOT like them, I possess them as physical items. I may return to the gaming shop and sell them there, or sell them online.
In addition, if all I want from the set is a single card, then I can look up the price of that card and purchase it. Or trade with my friends to get it. My control over the physical items makes it fundamentally different from the digital item which does not have the option to sell for real currency or purchase for cash.
If you have lootboxes, and then combine them with a 'fair trade' store where players may trade items either between each other or for items of equal value with the 'game', and also include a cash marketplace where any item in a lootbox may be purchased for real currency then the majority of my issues go away since at that point the only remaining 'functional' lootbox is the 'surprise!' lootbox where all items inside are desirable, and there are no duplicates. The 'surprise!' lootbox is just fine with me. It effectively makes them just a different way to buy DLC for those who like surprises.
I don't agree.
The original point as to why lootboxes are definitely gambling made a comparison to "lotteries at the fair", wherein you pay, something random happens, and you always get "something" and this is gambling. Therefore because you in a lootbox, you pay, something random happens, and you always get something, they're the same.
Which, if we take this comparison as valid, then you can replace the word lootbox with booster pack and it's exactly the same, any differences as to why it's actually not gambling all take place after the fact, so they don't matter.
Gambling is the wagering of money or something of value (referred to as "the stakes") on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning money or material goods. Gambling thus requires three elements be present: consideration, chance and prize.
Consideration: the money spent on the lootbox.
Chance: the randomization factor of the contents of the lootbox.
Prize: The desired drop.
It's clear-cut gambling.
No, can't say it is.
There is always a prize, no matter what happens. So, without the ability to come away with nothing, which is a key component of gambling, it doesn't fit.
No definition of gambling requires that you be able to come away with nothing. It only requires that there be a result you want and a chance that you don't get that result. If a casino instituted a consolation prize where each failed pull on a slot machine gave you back a penny, it doesn't suddenly become not gambling.
With a lootbox when you get one, you'll get four (or whatever) items, and you'll always get four items, there's no change ever.
There's a consistent 'prize' being given.
I cannot see how this is gambling.
The different items have different values to the player, and different values to different players, and cannot be traded between players to normalize those values.
I may only want The Enchanted Fish, so effectively loot boxes either contain the fish, or they contain nothing.
But they clearly do not contain nothing, so i'm a bit sceptical of this line of reasoning.
I've certainly gotten legendary skins for characters I cannot play but that's still a prize, i'd be lying if i said otherwise.
And what people are saying is that, if you never use a prize, it might as well not exist if it cannot be resold or traded in. In the example case, a consumer bought a loot box and got nothing that would be used from it.
That is not functionally different from getting an empty box, is the logic in place.
If a consumer were trying to get a specific legendary for a specific character, would they be likely to not buy another lootbox because they got a prize, even if it's not the one they wanted and will (in all likelihood) never use it?
Ok, I see what you're saying, but it puts me to thinking - does that mean that if they change their minds later and decide to main let's say, Ana, for a bit do those empty boxes with skins and sprays for her retroactively become not-empty?
And do previously not empty boxes become empty if you suddenly decide that you've got more respect for yourself and will no longer pick Hanzo?
Honestly, I am not sold on this at all.
Yes, it's possible a hypothetical player will make gameplay choices, either by coincidence or by choice (in the case of Overwatch: "Man, I've got that sweet skin/emote/spray for _______ I'ma start playing them"), that produce or reduce the value of already bought loot boxes. Over the long term, there are realities of the system that do reduce the total value of "wasted money", where wasted money is defined as lootbox items that a player has no initial intent to use. I'm not trying to deny that or refuse to account for it.
However, the issue I have with it is that the money was already spent back when a player was buying loot boxes. At the time of purchase, a loot box system that allows for duplicate drops, is going to induce a psychological effect to keep buying. The idea of chasing the wanted item and also the idea of sunk costs. The problem is not that an unwanted item will always be unwanted and therefore a "waste of money", the problem is that: At the time of purchase, a loot box system encourages repeated/additional purchases.
I do agree with the Extra Credits video on loot box systems, that these systems and the psychological effects around them, need and deserve additional study.
If there is no temptation to throw good money after bad, why do I keep hearing "Oh, I didn't get x skin, guess I'll pay another 10 bucks"
That's not good money after bad.
Have you gambled your rent money away and now desperately trying to win it back with your electric bill money?
that's good money, bad money-situation.
Ok. Simple question: why not sell the exact same items, individually, without any randomness ?
Question before I launch into a diatribe:
Are we distinguishing mobile game gacha from retail game lootboxes?
Because the two are fundamentally very similar, but not exactly the same in a lot of their design considerations due to how they interact with or don't interact with game mechanics, e.g. Overwatch's gameplay is not mechanically driven by what players get from lootboxes, even though the player's desire to play is stimulated by what they get from lootboxes.
For the sake of getting an actual answer, let's limit the question to loot boxes in AAA games.
Why not sell the same items directly, instead of selling them randomly ?
Oh, I'm not going to be nice about them, it's just a question about how assholish I was going to be about them!
It's all about the money.
In the case of the cosmetics in OW:
It's entirely because it makes more money. If you were to take the drop rates as flat, without any pity rate modifiers (e.g. like Fire Emblem Heroes has) or anti-duplicate modifiers (e.g. as OW says that they have, for which I do not know the rate adjustment), then the expected value of a Legendary is 13.5 lootboxes (according to the Chinese OW site). At the most "economical" rate of $40 USd for 50 lootboxes, the expected cost of a single Legendary is $10.80 USd. Given that you aren't guaranteed to get your desired Legendary on your first try and that the anti-duplicate modifier is maximally strong (i.e. you will 100% always get a Legendary you do NOT have until you have all Legendaries), and that in the current event banner the ONLY Legendaries that drop are the event Legendaries (which together form a very generous assumption!), the worst-case scenario for getting a Legendary in the current banner is that you get the one you wanted last.
There are currently 13 Legendary items in the Lunar New Year event.
In a worst-case scenario under these highly generous assumptions, getting a desired Legendary item purely by rolling is expected to cost $140 USd.
Your odds of getting a particular desired Legendary improve with each Legendary acquired, and it could be argued that the player will have acquired all this gold and all these other things all those other Legendaries, but it's also the case that Overwatch's retail MSRP is $40 USd.
For all the kerfuffle about horse armor DLC, the expected cost to acquire the horse armor was not literally more than 3x the MSRP of the game.
Just a note: I think that using "worst case" and "expected value" in a combination looks really funky, especially when statistics adjacent, since EV has a pretty standard meaning.
I'll check their maths properly when I get home, but yes, the expected value is not the worst case.
I'm operating on just a few hours of sleep, so I apologize if I've mixed them in a funky way. Do correct me!
Your math is correct.
So, with 13 legendary skins, and a system ensuring that a player never get a duplicated skin, and assuming that every loot box contains one legendary skin, on average, it would takes 7 loot boxes to get that skin.
If there's no replacement, and we assumes that the duplicate skins are worthless (to simplify), it would indeed takes about 13 loot boxes, on average, with a median of 9.
I think it's possible to deal with the case where duplicates have some value, using a Markov chain, but that would take some time and would not be that informative.
So, given that players are willing to pay about 20$ per skin, why would they object to paying that directly ?
They get to spend less time opening boxes, and they have less transactions to do.
The publisher would be making more money, since they avoid controversy and they do not have to program a random-box-opening screen (as well as a good RNG, for that matter).
That would be win-win.
Not every box has a legendary skin.
HamHamJ on
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
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Let's see:
Paradox interactive seems profitable based on their Year of the end reports.
Don't they do mostly single-player and small-scale multiplayer games?*
*Meaning that they don't have continuous huge hosting expenses, like modern FPS, Moba and MMORPG-games do.
And why does that make more money? They could just increase the price per item.
You don't. You may think you do, but the skinner box forces these systems are designed to exploit are not something you can will away even if you understand how they work. The only winning move is not to play.
They could, but are you going to assume that people would buy them at increasingly higher prices in the a volume that would be acceptable?
To be clear here, I am absolutely not calling you a rube.
But the point you seem to be missing is that just because you're aware of exploitation, it doesn't stop it being exploitation.
Like, I have the state of mind to be able to go into a casino with $100 and say to myself "I'm going to leave after either 2 hours have passed, or I lose all this money, whichever comes first". I have avoided all the pitfalls of traditional gambling and protected myself thanks to my level of self control.
What I'm doing is still considered gambling.
making this argument personal seems like a bad idea.
Let's stop doing that please.
Paradox's expansions are...very different. Games like Stellaris certainly get radical updates, and a lot of them, but there is very clearly zero hosting cost on their side (aside from whatever it takes for you to get the game form them). And if you don't have the actual DLC (and not the updated game itself), you don't play multiplayer with those do, as far as I now.
Why would they not ? After all, people are already paying what they want. It would just be less trouble for them. One transaction at a known cost instead of many with an unknown total cost.
Oh, I'm not going to be nice about them, it's just a question about how assholish I was going to be about them!
It's all about the money.
In the case of the cosmetics in OW:
It's entirely because it makes more money. If you were to take the drop rates as flat, without any pity rate modifiers (e.g. like Fire Emblem Heroes has) or anti-duplicate modifiers (e.g. as OW says that they have, for which I do not know the rate adjustment), then the expected value of a Legendary is 13.5 lootboxes (according to the Chinese OW site). At the most "economical" rate of $40 USd for 50 lootboxes, the expected cost of a single Legendary is $10.80 USd. Given that you aren't guaranteed to get your desired Legendary on your first try and that the anti-duplicate modifier is maximally strong (i.e. you will 100% always get a Legendary you do NOT have until you have all Legendaries), and that in the current event banner the ONLY Legendaries that drop are the event Legendaries (which together form a very generous assumption!), the worst-case scenario for getting a Legendary in the current banner is that you get the one you wanted last.
There are currently 13 Legendary items in the Lunar New Year event.
In a worst-case scenario under these highly generous assumptions, getting a desired Legendary item purely by rolling is expected to cost $140 USd.
Your odds of getting a particular desired Legendary improve with each Legendary acquired, and it could be argued that the player will have acquired all this gold and all these other things all those other Legendaries, but it's also the case that Overwatch's retail MSRP is $40 USd.
For all the kerfuffle about horse armor DLC, the expected cost to acquire the horse armor was not literally more than 3x the MSRP of the game.
We can make this simple.
Consideration: the money spent on the lootbox.
Chance: the randomization factor of the contents of the lootbox.
Prize: The desired drop.
It's clear-cut gambling.
You can't give someone a pirate ship in one game, and then take it back in the next game. It's rude.
Just a note: I think that using "worst case" and "expected value" in a combination looks really funky, especially when statistics adjacent, since EV has a pretty standard meaning.
I'll check their maths properly when I get home, but yes, the expected value is not the worst case.
No, can't say it is.
There is always a prize, no matter what happens. So, without the ability to come away with nothing, which is a key component of gambling, it doesn't fit.
You can have large hosting costs without requiring lootboxes. DOTA2 and LoL don't have lootboxes and DOTA2 not only has strictly cosmetic items only available directly, you can even buy/sell them to other people for real money
FPS has stopped doing expansions and just does the yearly releases now anyway
MOBAs don't do expansions and just release new maps and/or heroes, and you might as well give the maps away for free since your money source is in the characters and character cosmetics
MMOs have already solved that - have the expansion get the new content. You could still play WoW and not be current on expansions if you wanted to, you just couldn't get into the new zones
Honestly, Paradox's strategy games seem like an actual-to-goodness "games as service," where after release they are given years and years and years of tuning, with free patches for all players, and with periodic paid DLC to both cover the expenses of continually refining the experience, and also to introduce more mechanics and what-nots to gameplay, to keep long-time players engaged.
However, what works for a grand strategy game might not work so well for all genres of games. By their very nature, most of Paradox's games tend to involve way more player-invested hours than most single-player games could dream of.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
No definition of gambling requires that you be able to come away with nothing. It only requires that there be a result you want and a chance that you don't get that result. If a casino instituted a consolation prize where each failed pull on a slot machine gave you back a penny, it doesn't suddenly become not gambling.
3DS: 0963-0539-4405
Their playerbase is so huge that despite having a very low ARPPU they still make crazy bank, which is cool for them, but it's not something that anyone else can do, unless you can somehow get 70 million players or whatever right out the gate.
With a lootbox when you get one, you'll get four (or whatever) items, and you'll always get four items, there's no change ever.
There's a consistent 'prize' being given.
I cannot see how this is gambling.
One of them might be Legendary! But it probably won't be.
The different items have different values to the player, and different values to different players, and cannot be traded between players to normalize those values.
I may only want The Enchanted Fish, so effectively loot boxes either contain the fish, or they contain nothing.
Legal definition of gambling according to federal law
Doesn't say anything about not getting anything in return. Hell subsection (B) describes the lootbox pretty well, since it is a lottery.
But they clearly do not contain nothing, so i'm a bit sceptical of this line of reasoning.
I've certainly gotten legendary skins for characters I cannot play but that's still a prize, i'd be lying if i said otherwise.
And what people are saying is that, if you never use a prize, it might as well not exist if it cannot be resold or traded in. In the example case, a consumer bought a loot box and got nothing that would be used from it.
That is not functionally different from getting an empty box, is the logic in place.
If a consumer were trying to get a specific legendary for a specific character, would they be likely to not buy another lootbox because they got a prize, even if it's not the one they wanted and will (in all likelihood) never use it?
It's $10 a pull. Is this gambling?
You can't give someone a pirate ship in one game, and then take it back in the next game. It's rude.
But that makes it that much closer to explicitly being "valuables" which is something I'm sure Blizzard doesn't want regulators looking at too closely.
Also, isn't it possible that you can get "duplicates" of whatever you already have? So theoretically you could get a Legendary skin drop... but it's the one you already had!
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I'm operating on just a few hours of sleep, so I apologize if I've mixed them in a funky way. Do correct me!
I did not notice any actual mistakes, it's more that I can get the expected value of an item under a few different scenarios once I get home.
At which point, the question becomes "why would players object to paying that directly, since that's what they are already paying, on average?"
Dupes do convert into in game cash though, so you can buy that S76 skin once you rack up enough of them.
Ok, I see what you're saying, but it puts me to thinking - does that mean that if they change their minds later and decide to main let's say, Ana, for a bit do those empty boxes with skins and sprays for her retroactively become not-empty?
And do previously not empty boxes become empty if you suddenly decide that you've got more respect for yourself and will no longer pick Hanzo?
Honestly, I am not sold on this at all.
Do they convert into an equivalent amount though? Like, do you receive more based on the rarity of the dupe?
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Why have dupes in the first place?
Yes - sorry, should have mentioned that.
Dupes have two purposes - pad out the number of available drops, which decreases the chances of getting the desired item, and granting the player some token amount of FunBux, encouraging the next lootbox purchase. It's a very slick system.
You can't give someone a pirate ship in one game, and then take it back in the next game. It's rude.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gacha_game
Except their implementation in games in the west more closely matches implementation of pachinko.
Replace "special token" with "skin your character can wear" and you've got the exact same thing. So they're "not gambling" in the sense that pachinko parlors are "not gambling" in the exact way that they've been designed to specifically circumvent gambling laws.
Yep. The primary purpose of dupes is to make sure your chances to win don't actually go up as you spend money. If you had zero dupes, a player willing to spend a bunch of money could be quite certain of getting everything. In a gacha/lootbox system, though, people can easily spend 300 dollars on rolling the gacha and NOT get the thing they wanted. Which is the entire reason for the booster pack model in the first place!
Your math is correct.
So, with 13 legendary skins, and a system ensuring that a player never get a duplicated skin, and assuming that every loot box contains one legendary skin, on average, it would takes 7 loot boxes to get that skin.
If there's no replacement, and we assumes that the duplicate skins are worthless (to simplify), it would indeed takes about 13 loot boxes, on average, with a median of 9.
I think it's possible to deal with the case where duplicates have some value, using a Markov chain, but that would take some time and would not be that informative.
So, given that players are willing to pay about 20$ per skin, why would they object to paying that directly ?
They get to spend less time opening boxes, and they have less transactions to do.
The publisher would be making more money, since they avoid controversy and they do not have to program a random-box-opening screen (as well as a good RNG, for that matter).
That would be win-win.
Which happens a ton in gacha games. On the various Reddits for those games when the special rolling events come around you'll see picture after picture of someone rolling 5+ of a different ultra rare card they already have before they rolled even 1 of the ultra rare card they actually want. Bonus points if despite being the "same" level of rarity one card has drastically lower odds than the other but the game doesn't tell you that.
Yes, it's possible a hypothetical player will make gameplay choices, either by coincidence or by choice (in the case of Overwatch: "Man, I've got that sweet skin/emote/spray for _______ I'ma start playing them"), that produce or reduce the value of already bought loot boxes. Over the long term, there are realities of the system that do reduce the total value of "wasted money", where wasted money is defined as lootbox items that a player has no initial intent to use. I'm not trying to deny that or refuse to account for it.
However, the issue I have with it is that the money was already spent back when a player was buying loot boxes. At the time of purchase, a loot box system that allows for duplicate drops, is going to induce a psychological effect to keep buying. The idea of chasing the wanted item and also the idea of sunk costs. The problem is not that an unwanted item will always be unwanted and therefore a "waste of money", the problem is that: At the time of purchase, a loot box system encourages repeated/additional purchases.
I do agree with the Extra Credits video on loot box systems, that these systems and the psychological effects around them, need and deserve additional study.
Not every box has a legendary skin.