Oh Blizzard, how you have fallen (Diablo Immortal).

[Dhrizzle]

sure: https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=study...m+of+lootboxes

A simple "no" would have sufficed.

[Jerot]

It's like shitting on a red ferarri because you cannot afford it.

A ferrari costs money to produce, continues to hold value once bought, and is useful outside of the shop you bought it in.

We're talking about paying to overcome a virtual hurdle in a video game.

They made that hurdle impossibly hard to cross without paying, to create demand for a shortcut. And set the price of that shortcut so high, you could instead spend it going halfsies on a Red Ferrari Portofino. This is the hill you choose to fight on?

[Elim Garak]

A ferrari costs money to produce, continues to hold value once bought, and is useful outside of the shop you bought it in.

We're talking about paying to overcome a virtual hurdle in a video game.

They made that hurdle impossibly hard to cross without paying to create demand for a shortcut. And set the price of that shortcut so high, you could instead spend it going halfsies on a Red Ferrari Portofino. This is the hill you choose to fight on?

Value is in the eye of the buyer.
In case of the in-game items - it's the entertainment value. You don't get to decide how valuable it is for other people.
If you don't see value (but we both know that you do because if you didn't you would just call those who pay for it - stupid and moved on - but you are here) - don't pay for it.

But the mere fact that there are people who pay for it and don't ask for refunds - means it has value.

[KrayZ33]

How is it a what if when you brought it up as an example to support your argument? That means you are the one focusing on a what if of packages being sold half-full and not me. It is your argument lmao. Amazing how you dismiss your incorrect examples as me focusing on the wrong thing and not you ignoring actual facts. In most cases a company will change a product to favor themselves. I'm not sure why I need to explain that to you.

Dude... stop wasting my time, I gave you like 20 examples of packaging issues, with real life pictures. You chose an imaginary example I didn't present and made a point out of it.
I mentioned packages, not "bags of chips that are filled with air" or whatever. I even went out of my way to explain the situation with the pringles package and how it transformed over a relatively short timespan and *HOW* they did it. (see, that's the important part, *HOW* they did it.)
Amazing how you always never adress the points being made and play the ignorant fool.

Not sure if I'm misunderstanding your point here, but everyone has said that this ISN'T a new thing, or a "single offender". That this is the mobile market in a nutshell.

I'm saying that people pick one thing out of the list and say "this isn't so bad" and then ignore the rest, not realizing that all the "not so bad points" create a massive pile of shit.
It should be obviously that with "people" I don't mean every single human being that has ever commented on this subject, in case that wasn't clear.

[Ghost of Cow]

I'm saying that people pick one thing out of the list and say "this isn't so bad" and then ignore the rest, not realizing that all the "not so bad points" create a massive pile of shit.

Oh, fair enough.

[xenogear3]

Orbs are not used just for crests. You are so focused on Legendary Gems that you constructed this false narrative that Orb packs are designed around crests and thus must give exactly the amount of orbs to buy 50 because of a bad luck protection that kicks in.

You must have never played a gacha game before.
The Legendary Crest (premium currency) is the most and only important thing in a gacha game.
Some people login in and do only events which can gain premium currency. Then logout.
If there is no premium currency, they don't even login.

Blizzard doesn't know how the gacha game works.
It expects people to grind for "useless" resources, and have premium currency on top of it.

[Lolites]

Well I'd be careful there because by that argument, Big Tobacco shouldn't be liable for all the millions of people affected hooked on their product.

idk, im pretty sure most people are not against big tobaco due to cigaretes causing addiction and costing money, its more the cancer, death, the damage it causes to organism not only of the smoker but of bystanders too...
so comparing that to games is one of the worst analogies ive ever seen...

[rhorle]

Dude... stop wasting my time, I gave you like 20 examples of packaging issues, with real life pictures.

Packaging issues that don't indicate they are being sold half-full. There are reasons why some have empty spaces in the packaging that you didn't acknowledge. It doesn't indicate that the package has labels for how much is in the package as well. So there is nothing predatory about it. Inflation, material costs, and a whole bunch of different things go into the differences.

It doesn't apply to DI selling currency that only allows you to buy 45 crests instead of 50. Is it a trick to get you to maybe buy more? Sure. But it is one a person willingly chooses to do. Could they have made the highest package give 50 crests? Certainly. Would it have been better? Sure. It isn't predatory, unethical, or a big deal that they didn't do that though. If you are buying to ensure bad luck protection you are already aware of what you have to buy and making the active decision to do so. These tricks exist everywhere and are not really bad. Sometimes it works out in favor of the consumer with buy 1 get 1 free when they want two things and sometimes it just gets them to spend when they don't need more.

I'm saying that people pick one thing out of the list and say "this isn't so bad" and then ignore the rest

No one is ignoring the rest though. People are taking issue with specific arguments you are making that don't apply. Just like you imply that quote was from me by leaving out the name of the actual person that posted it. Just because other things are bad doesn't mean you get carte blanche to make up anything you want just as long as it is also negative/hate about DI, Blizzard, or whatever the target of ire is.

[Elim Garak]

You must have never played a gacha game before.
The Legendary Crest (premium currency)

Crests are not premium currency. Orbs are.
Crests are just items you use to modify rifts to give you gems as a reward.
But what do I know, I never played a gacha game before.

[Dhrizzle]

Rift things eh.

You mean elder rifts and crests? And the gems you can only get from crests? Or craft with materials you get from crests? You can also get the materials with fading embers I suppose... that you only get by running crests.

CSGO doesn't have loot boxes either, you pay to watch the parade of guns scrolling by with fancy animations and sounds, and you get a free gun at the end! It's not even called a "box" and the game doesn't have "loot".

Rift things are a part of the game that can be played with or without the Crests. The Crests themselves change what loot you can get from the Rifts. You can think of them as loot-boxes with extra stages if you like but they are missing out on key components that can make loot-boxes such a predatory product akin to gambling (and classified as gambling in some jurisdictions.) If you want to call them loot-boxes because you associate that word with bad feelings I can't be arsed arguing against it, but they are not the same thing beyond you being able to describe both as shitty MTX.

[Jerot]

So a player buying two packs and having extra Orbs - is not losing anything. He has his 50+ packs for bad luck protection and orbs to buy other IMPORTANT stuff.

Well you may have tried the game (assuming that other post wasn't a lie), but obviously you haven't looked in it very hard. There is nothing else important to buy with orbs. Maybe Dawning Echoes once you finishing ranking up your gems? But to even get to that point you've already spent 100x the cost of the echoes in crests.

Gems are the only uncapped system to increase your character power with, everything else is on timers, even for the richest of pay to win players. Buying everything else in the store, to the point where you had nothing usable to buy until they patch in more stuff, would cost you less than 1% of what you could spend on crests.

Rift things are a part of the game that can be played with or without the Crests. The Crests themselves change what loot you can get from the Rifts. You can think of them as loot-boxes with extra stages if you like but they are missing out on key components that can make loot-boxes such a predatory product akin to gambling (and classified as gambling in some jurisdictions.) If you want to call them loot-boxes because you associate that word with bad feelings I can't be arsed arguing against it, but they are not the same thing beyond you being able to describe both as shitty MTX.

CSGO cases are a part of the game that can be found with or without buying keys. The keys change what value you get from finding cases (selling them vs opening them).

What key components are they missing, that you can't cash out the rewards directly for money?

Technically you can't in CSGO either, it's against ToS. At best you can put them on the market for steam credit which is locked to the platform. Kind of like selling legendary gems on the market for platinum.

[Lolites]

I'm sorry, but this thread officially jumped the shark when spending money in a video game was equated with getting AIDS.

I think we can all just move on with our lives now, it can't go any lower.

and gaming companies to big tobacco, i guess due to all the cancer and lung diseases games cause...

[RobertoCarlos]

and gaming companies to big tobacco, i guess due to all the cancer and lung diseases games cause...

Yeah because gambling has never ruined any lives or families.

[Jerot]

Yeah because gambling has never ruined any lives or families.

If some of the people in this thread are to be believed, it's entirely the fault of the gamblers. "They could choose to not spend money gambling."

[Lolites]

So yes, actually not playing this game would let to better games in the future.

better game FOR YOU... for example if nobody plays it they might go with the pay2play or subscription instead of f2p, which is immediately WORSE for some people...
maybe next time try to think instead of assuming what you want is better for everyone...

[RobertoCarlos]

If some of the people in this thread are to be believed, it's entirely the fault of the gamblers. "They could choose to not spend money gambling."

Naturally they all dodged my question of "If someone is caught selling drugs to people at AA (drug prevention meetings), Is it the person whos selling the drugs fault or the person for taking the drugs? Drugs are bad right"

They like to make us out as hyperbole pearl clutchers for pointing out that hey maybe we shouldnt let companies just shit all over us. And thats why there are laws to stop this kind of predatory behavior in the first place but they are riding the coat tails of negligence of these dinosaurs who have the power to implement adapted laws to video game loot boxes but they dont even understand what a loot box is.

But yeah tabacco kill people video game fine I guess

[Elim Garak]

Well you may have tried the game (assuming that other post wasn't a lie), but obviously you haven't looked in it very hard. There is nothing else important to buy with orbs. Maybe Dawning Echoes once you finishing ranking up your gems? But to even get to that point you've already spent 100x the cost of the echoes in crests.

Are you the judge on what's important to other people now as well?
I'm pretty sure Platinum bought with Orbs is quite important, even to you.

[Unlimitedmailsworks]

It doesn't apply to DI selling currency that only allows you to buy 45 crests instead of 50. Is it a trick to get you to maybe buy more? Sure. But it is one a person willingly chooses to do.

come on dude... they trick them, but the "victim" of the trick is "willingly tricked"?
It's a trick and they know it works on people, that's why they use it.
Do you think they do it for "fun" and because it's a "funny trick"? Obviously not. It's one out of 100 ways to make you fall for the bad practices this shop offers.

Could they have made the highest package give 50 crests? Certainly. Would it have been better? Sure. It isn't predatory, unethical, or a big deal that they didn't do that though. If you are buying to ensure bad luck protection you are already aware of what you have to buy and making the active decision to do so. These tricks exist everywhere and are not really bad. Sometimes it works out in favor of the consumer with buy 1 get 1 free when they want two things and sometimes it just gets them to spend when they don't need more.

Wherever these tricks exist, it's bad practice, you are excusing bad stuff because other bad stuff exists.
And we are talking about people who might NOT be aware of what they are doing because they are, and you said it yourself, TRICKED.
How is using tricks on your customers not unethical btw. your line of argument makes no sense.

No one is ignoring the rest though. People are taking issue with specific arguments you are making that don't apply. Just like you imply that quote was from me by leaving out the name of the actual person that posted it. Just because other things are bad doesn't mean you get carte blanche to make up anything you want just as long as it is also negative/hate about DI, Blizzard, or whatever the target of ire is.

You are literally doing it right now.
You ignore that everything inside that shop is designed to mess with you and you think the consumer will still make the best possible choice.

Gn8, until 12-06 or however long my ban gets extended now for interacting with obvious trolls and creating a burner account to evade it.

[Jerot]

better game FOR YOU... for example if nobody plays it they might go with the pay2play or subscription instead of f2p, which is immediately WORSE for some people...
maybe next time try to think instead of assuming what you want is better for everyone...

If it had either of those models there would be no reason to cap everything to keep whales happy/paying, they wouldn't need to limit you to 1-5 of each event daily, your battle pass progress weekly, your EXP gain tied to the server, which also limited your ability to wear found upgrades or craft them. There wouldn't need to be a soft cap on Legendaries and Normal Gems. On crafting materials.

The Legendary gem grind wouldn't need to be paced so slowly as to take literal decades of daily gameplay to make progress on.

That sounds like a better game for everyone, unless they aren't willing to pay for quality games, but that sounds like a them problem.

Are you the judge on what's important to other people now as well?
I'm pretty sure Platinum bought with Orbs is quite important, even to you.

It's just how the game is designed. Crests are by far the most valuable thing you could buy with orbs and it's not even close.

Platinum can be spent on more gems, but its not efficient to get the sheer number of garbage gems you need to sacrifice to upgrade your good gems with. 1 5-star gem out of the potential 36 you can cram into a character takes over 4,000 1-star gems worth of "gem power".

I could indulge you and say sure, maybe someone only wants to play through the chapters and buy a set of cosmetic armor. But the monetization is clear, that isn't who this game is targeting. One person engaged with gems and gear resonance is more profitable to Blizzard/NetEase by a factor of multiple thousand.

It's setup the way it is to get people to buy multiple packs and spend more than they need to. Like everything else in this game. The first "800%" value beginner pack doesn't even give you enough orbs to spend in the store.

[Dhrizzle]

CSGO cases are a part of the game that can be found with or without buying keys. The keys change what value you get from finding cases (selling them vs opening them).

What key components are they missing, that you can't cash out the rewards directly for money?

Technically you can't in CSGO either, it's against ToS. At best you can put them on the market for steam credit which is locked to the platform. Kind of like selling legendary gems on the market for platinum.

It's the fact that with loot-boxes there's no intermediary stage between buying the box and getting your prize. With Crests there is at least that bit where you have to play the game and complete a Rift before you decide whether or not to spend more money. It might not seem much but that disconnection can be a key difference psychologically.