The User Experience of Lootboxes
blog.prototypr.io
blog.prototypr.io
But unfortunately, this trend won't stop until consumers also take a stand and vote with their wallets. I was excited for Battlefront and the new Shadow of War games but decided not to buy (or pirate) either. On the other hand, maybe litigation is the only way to change these exploitative grey-area practices.
/and I'm not saying that prescriptively/judgmentally, just saying that is literally how the market mechanically works.
Steam's market is also regularly used for actual money laundering through trades and inflated buy orders.
It's a critical argument, because it is the difference between an even playing field and pay-to-win.
>The game experience involves customizing your character. Cosmetic items are by definition part of the game and, therefore, enhance gameplay.
How much of a core gaming experience is "what one of your characters is wearing"?
If it's a massive thing, you are presumably playing the wrong games.
It's not a core gameplay mechanic, it's... Well, purely cosmetic.
In every game, from CS:GO, to Overwatch, to WoW, people seem to care what they're wearing. If it's so unimportant to the game, why do people care? Why do people spend real money on cosmetics that have "no impact" on gameplay? Drop this contrarian nonsense, it's clearly important to the game. "Purely cosmetic" is a misleading non-material weasel word.
This isn't important to the "game" - you can still win/lose just as well - but it's an important social aspect for those who want to show off. (I make no judgement on those who like to flaunt the fancy gear - it just makes me want to beat them even more while wearing ugly game-cosmetics that I didn't pay anything for.)
What's intrinsically wrong with a game that uses clothing as a mechanic?
This is naive. If the only solution you proffer is one of consumer boycott then the problem will never get better. Boycotts rarely, if ever, affect anything. And given the nature of the problem — the addictive nature of some game mechanics and dependency on the reward mechanisms of the brain — I think it is borderline foolhardy to believe simple “free will” to be a solution of any seriousness.
So in summary, if this is the direction games are going, I guess I’ll start looking at more board games, and get better on that mandolin. Because this is not how I care to spend even a minimal amount of my gaming time.
That said, I sympathize. Things tangential to the core gameplay should be... tangential. The problem is that these days, the idea of what constitutes "gameplay" differs is different for the studios than it is for the players.
In something newer like the DCS series each aircraft has rows of knobs - that represent reality as closely as possible. Of course you can expand Simulation to all sorts of domains. e.g. for tanks Steel Beasts is almost a game in the proper sense, but quite simulation influenced (actual militaries use it to train tank teams).
Finally, why restrict yourself to avation/military... you could truly attempt simulate any experience. essentially, you would de-gamify it.
i think the core values of simulation are free-form structure, customization, exploration, experimentation.
Are engaging with these sims "fun"? I dont' know, but folks sure seem to spend a lot of time "playing" them. They must be getting something out of it.
I'm interested how far you could take this, how far you could expand into something engaging that not along the well-trodden path of flight/military/car stuff.
Pushing a button to get a drip of dopamine doesn't qualify for this category either.
I still have it around... in the preface, one of the lead game designers (IIRC) tells the story of how he went up a twin-seat F-16 with a pilot who was consulting for the game, who in mid-air proceed to let the guy fly the bird... and actually, he did pretty well!
That statement to me shows you even have difficulty conceptualizing what a non-gamified model even look like! (.e.g "sufficiently-evil enemies to kill").
Simulation has much more elements of tedium (no "pacing"), just like real life.
Or the learning curve is not constructed just so to be the perfect on-ramp, just like real life. The learning curve is simply what nature/environment demands.
e.g. "Enemies" are not "sufficiently evil", or even presented to you at proper game-enjoyment level times/pacing.
It is why simulations are not really "games", they are not "fun" (but the can be, but that isn't the "point"), but my point was that something draws people to them, and they engage with them. It's interesting to think about why.
Flight simulators do not have the same moral quandary, so we don't have to worry about it there: we can ask the question "is flying fun"... and you seem to have ignored my premise which is that the answer is apparently "yes": people who own planes report that flying is fun.
However, most people can't fly, as it requires you to have a ton of disposable income to own the plane and contract the hanger and pay for the fuel. The people I know who own planes hardly ever get to fly them, and when you do get to fly you are often almost "forced to" in order to keep your training up to date.
Regardless, it is worth noting that you have now slipped into the territory of having defined a simulation as something inherently not fun, so we should ask if a flight simulator even qualifies for your circular definition, and it turns out it doesn't :/.
So, the reason why a true combat simulator (with the caveat that the enemy is "sufficiently evil") would be "not fun" is that most of combat is "hurry up and wait", maintaining your equipment, and doing training exercises. What makes a first person shooter fun is that you get to do only the parts that are thrilling, challenging, and engaging: even your gun is maintained by other people.
A flight simulator is thereby not really a simulator, as if it were 99% of your time would be spent making money to buy fuel. You would only get to fly a couple times a month at most, and your plane would even be in the shop a lot. You would be managing your flight certification credits more than your air traffic control, and you would have a pretty limited set of destinations.
In Flight Simulator, you can fly any plane, from anywhere to anywhere, the plane always works (unless you ask for it to not work), you get to decide how bad (aka, "exciting") the weather is, and the fuel is effectively free. You get to spend all of your time doing the parts that are thrilling, challenging, and engaging.
The closest you can get to this experience in the real world is flying commercially, whether for a large airline (in which case you do get to fly large aircraft--which is both interesting and boring--but mostly in good weather on someone else's schedule) or you start your own small business flying people around (in which case we would expect a bunch of sales and accounting hours).
If it has any kind of "game mechanic", that's a game, not a simulation.
All these things are available in Darkest Dungeon ;)
Their argument is basically that AAA games are just way too cheap. The price has been at $60 for a long time, and even though the market has expanded since then, it's still not enough to cover the development costs, which have skyrocketed. Finding other revenue streams has become a necessity. The alternative would be $80 or $100 AAA games.
I encourage you to check out Jim Sterling's video "The Sixty Dollar Myth" as a good argument for the other side.
Or lowering production costs. Less reliance on expensive licenses and must-be-bigger-than-the-last-one sequels and more original content instead would be a good starting point.
More likely, that would increase production costs. People pay for "expensive" licenses only when they are preceived to be a cheap way to buy an audience that will pay for the game, avoiding licenses and franchises in favor of "more original content" means more costs for content and more cost for marketing.
In pretty much all video games that have them, you can't draft with loot boxes, or it wouldn't make any sense. I played Destiny 2 recently and had a good amount of fun, but much of the game felt so artificial and designed around a boardroom-brainstormed economic strategy. It seems this has just resulted in chaos in the fan community. I strongly recommend Monster Hunter World instead. Loot-based, grindy action game, without loot boxes.
Also: I hereby regret that I didn't make contact with adult CCG communities when I was ~10-13 and into Magic and other games; with my cousin, we've spent plenty of our pocket money buying booster packs...
With drafting, having a randomized pack actually serves a purpose other than gambling, in that the unknown nature of the contents of the pack means that the people sitting at the table picking cards for their deck don't know what will be coming and what others have picked (which makes the act of this drafting itself an interesting skill and entertaining experience separate from merely "opening a pack hoping for a good card")
There are many of $15 indie games and board games (see: Star Realms) that offer many nights of fun, though...
I find the Ryan Air example particularly interesting.
Im happy i bought my overwatch key on g2a, those people buying keys in bulk and then doing chargeback can have the money rather than Blizzard.
edit: To expand upon, most of these costs are invented the game makers. In games like CS source you didnt need to buy any skins, you could make your own and replace the in-game models to see them client side and if you wanted everyone to see it you could have the server you ran the game on use it. But now no one lets you host your own server and prevents you from mixtering with the game files, so now you need to pay for simple recolors that you could have made yourself before or get through the community.
And another reason not to buy games anymore is that you really dont own them. When steam finally dies one day your 'license' expires and all your games are gone, not like it mattered anyway since more and more games require verification from servers owned by the developer/publisher either to play online or to verify your copy (doors in Diablo 3 are server side iirc). These servers then close down to force you to buy the latest game in the series. Or nobody bothers to keep them online when the company gets purchased or closed. And rarely to never at all do they let anyone set up third party servers because why would they. /rant
Overwatch is ONLY cosmetics in lootboxes, has high drop-rate in normal play. They give them out like candy. They literally gave you more at Christmas.
It's rubbish suggesting you have to grind, you earn lootboxes for virtually EVERYTHING because you are constantly earning XP for playing almost every game, QP or ranked or arcade.
There's a reasonable in-game currency, no external trading, and is frankly an example of loot boxes done right.
Your attitude is "I'd rather defraud the devs, even though the game I have is the opposite of Pay-to-Win."
I don't get it.
I seriously don't understand game culture these days. The rhetoric seems to hint at things I don't understand.
I herald from the relatively pastoral times of doom, mortal kombat, x-com, worms.
Reading discussions between gamers and about games these these days feels like a postmodernist imbroglio involving Derrida and lacan.
Spoooky! How do they have anything to do with this?
It’s not difficult at all to understand. If you pay $59.99 for something, are you entitled to ownership of the entire game? Or are you entitled to ten slot machines that randomly payout enhanced functionality at low probabilities? The majority of publishers seem to think the latter is a fair way of doing business.
I'm talking about what divisiveness exists in the industry as a whole, today, compared to what divisiveness exists in the industry as a whole then.
Then they release their latest iteration and they completely ruin it. Some extremely complex mechanic of crates giving crap that seems to be cosmetic only? I mean who is feeling rewarded in any way by having a purple gun if it works the same?
I already have a job, that's not what I've ever wanted out of video games.
I agree it shouldn’t be useless grind, it should be rewards for varying it up. Such as just trying something, or getting 5 kills with a gun. When you go out of your comfort zone, you are initially shit (naturally), so without the lure of an unlock “if I can just not suck for enough time to shoot down 3 planes” you stick with where you would have just gone back to the comfort zone otherwise.
Not something you need hundreds of hours of repetitive play to do. So perhaps “grind” is the wrong term for this type of progression. Getting to the end if the progression might be a grind if you want to do it deliberately. But I enjoyed the progressions of BF3 and 4 and I probably would have had less fun without it. I did the first 1000h because the first 100h had those rewards that compensated for me sucking as a player.
I don't mind modern mechanics that don't have to do with telling me how great I am. Ironsights are great and even going back to Left 4 Dead 2 from 2009 felt like going decades backwards in design. Cover systems range from okay to really good. (Red Orchestra 2 being my favorite on that front) Regenerating health is... okay well I don't like regenerating health much because it encourages corridor based level design rather than the classic exploration you'd get from Doom or Jedi Knight 2 or whatever.
And I'm especially upset that the single "element" pulled in when a game has "RPG elements" is the leveling system. That's not what makes an RPG an RPG, that's just the system that best fits tabletop games.
I miss when I could hop into a game, and apart from skill, everyone is on the same level.
Simplified weapons mechanics puts more emphasis on the combat rather than OP attachment combinations.
I’d be happy for the progression in BF1 to be shorter or slower because it has fewer items. But that buy-your-stuff system where you grind for the currency and then have to read up to not make a horrible mistake and buy the wrong thing, I’m not a fan of.
I never thought of any combinations as OP in the older games either tbh
First, I disagree with those who have been saying that piracy or purchasing keys from the grey market are solutions: those are just making the problem worse, not better. These gambling-like mechanics are coming from companies looking for a way to remain economically viable when their base prices stay the same even as the cost of development goes up, and stealing the product is just going to make this already bad situation much worse.
That being said, I am also firmly against the loot box model. While many genres of games use behavioral conditioning as a means to the end of making the game entertaining, the conditioning inherent in loot boxes represents a much tighter loop: one where the primary act of deriving enjoyment comes not from the experience of the game, but rather comes exclusively from that conditioning itself. When you look at it that way, the only difference between a loot box and gambling is that gambling has the additional harmful effect of being a "closed loop": that is to say, the solution to gambling may appear to a user to be "gamble more to make up your losses." But to me, that doesn't excuse loot boxes; it merely makes gambling a particularly egregious cousin within the genre of variable ratio scheduling-based "entertainment".
When I look at loot boxes, I see something that is (at least, in the general case) well-intentioned: the designers feel a need to find a way in this difficult market to retain viability, as mentioned recently by Extra Credits. They're in a hard spot, and a very personal one: indeed, their jobs and the jobs of their co-workers are on the line. Designers may also look at the entertainment caused by the reinforcement of conditioning and see that as providing value in itself: the act of "scoring big" on a random roll is indeed thrilling to people, and it is easy to believe that providing that to people provides them "value". But is it thrilling for the right reasons? Is that really value? Are we optimizing for the wrong measurement? My feeling is that this potentially well-intentioned pivot to loot boxes has and is derived from models of behavioral conditioning that feel harmful to end users even if they came from well-intentioned reasoning.
I would like to see the industry move away from this model; I know that right now a higher initial price tag is a hard pill to swallow, but at various times in the industry the price has been higher (adjusted for inflation), and the market accepted it. I think for example about the SNES era, where SNES games defaulted even back then to $80 for a new AAA game (adjusted for inflation, that'd be ~$140 today): the initial price was steep, but the market held and the people found value in it. There is also something to be said about profitability being obtained by being able to reach our much wider target audience - profit by volume, which is something that loot boxes take advantage of but that other models could take advantage of as well.
This is by no means an easy problem to solve, and I don't know where the industry will end up. The kinds of pressures mentioned recently by Extra Credits are very real, and loot boxes present a very obvious way to circumvent that issue. But I hope that an alternative model can be found; one that derives itself less from gambling and behavioral conditioning and more toward providing an obvious, easily calculable cost-to-benefit.
I'll also play more current games where I actually buy the game outright, although that's changed from computer to board games. I know what I'm getting with a board game. None of that stupid lootbox crap, or the Diablo3 method of forcing people to buy crap on eBay to play "single player game".
The game companies have forced me to migrate to local games. And Emulation serves its purpose very well. It assumes the same hardware, and just works. Yeah, it's breaking copyright, but well - I'd get screwed in buying legit. So well, whatever. Arr.