Hacker News Reader

Comment by efitz | Hacker News Reader

>something like aesthetic loot crates are a sideshow

No, they are very much a part of the experience. The anticipation of the reward and the tension build while the opening animation plays is an addiction mechanism. This is why we wrap presents and why “blind bags” are so successful (and also why toddlers will watch “surprise egg” videos for hours).

View on HN

I very much understand loot crates, I meant a side show to the rest of the game rather than tightly integrated into the gameplay. CS:GO for example, some people take the loot crates very seriously sure, but that's on them. Even the crate economy, as big of a market as it is, does not impact the gameplay. The actual game of counter-strike doesn't change based the crates sideshow.

On that aesthetic, and promised satisfaction - I once read some offhand BBS post that catharsis works slightly differently in gambling and other entertainment, such that, the anticipation phase is built up the same, but the release phase is crippled. This is so that the player is only partially satisfied and left frustrated in seek for a deserved full gratification, which closes the loop.

One clear demonstration of this I have seen is the lootbox screen in a pay-once game Vampire Survivors[1], which developer has background in casino software. This one is rather absurd that I almost believe it's intended for cultural preservation.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20pFsokokjo

It's a Skinner box. If the pigeon never gets a reward, it'll lose interest in the key. If it always gets a reward it'll hit the key, but not that much because the reward is always the same and its boring. If the reward only occurs sometimes, the pigeon'll go nuts hitting that key. We're the pigeons, and the "randomness" is constantly being tweaked to make sure we never get bored.

The point is, if the reward not just occurs rarely but were actually-kinda-disappointing, the pigeon gets even crazier than it had been huge jackpots, somehow.

Discrepancy between perceived and mathematical expectation is a big factor in keeping us hooked. So techniques to exaggerate the former are used.

Aesthetic loot crates are for sure still predatory/addictive, but I think the point here is that they don't directly impact the core gameplay experience. You can still get fragged by a player who's wearing the default skin (and sometimes that's a flex in itself...).

> the tension build while the opening animation plays is an addiction mechanism

Is this why BG3 has this extremely annoying and unskippable dice-rolling animation (technically, the rolling of the dice is the only thing you can actually skip)? Because other people somehow enjoy this?

It’s so bad, that the dice thing popping up induces a feeling of dread and annoyance in me.

That’s there half because it’s a tabletop system and half otherwise there is a break in causality. Just having a random chance of success or failure isn’t very obvious and you don’t see near misses and so on. For most people showing the action is more satisfying.

The underlying system comes from D&D so is full of quite crunchy randomness where results are usually rolled in front of everyone so you get a much more social experience and failure isn’t quite so bad (usually).

My main complaint about BG3 is actually how far they changed it from D&D. My favorite games are owlcat’s two Pathfinder games which is a tabletop system far crunchier than the streamlined D&D 5e.

But you are missing what I said. The information is great, the unskippable animations are not.

Yeah I misunderstood where the dread and annoyance came from, apologies!

At least on PC, you can click a couple times to avoid the animation. I tend to when the outcome is pretty likely (trying to roll above 10 with a +8 modifier for example) but the anticipation is exciting to my monkey brain if it's a tougher roll.

Not all of it, it has about a second before and after that are not skippable. All I do is spam clicks during those damn dice-rolls.

Especially bad when trying to pick a lock ten times in a row haha

Which luckily rarely happens once you get the "advantage on sleight of hand" gloves.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com