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[Ludorum Rex]

I disagree with the notion that the loot boxes in SoW don't impact the players who don't buy them. There has to be a degree of rarity to the contents, otherwise noone buys them. The choice of loot boxes specifically as a pay-for-loot mechanism is also very telling, as they're highly tied to the existence of very rare items.

Being able to grind currency in-game to get the boxes is not the default design. If there were no loot boxes, the loot would just drop from bosses. I guess it still does, but there is a very high chance that the best way to get the awesome drops is to farm currency and buy boxes. That's the microtransactions driving game design right there. Treasure orcs? In no way would that be a thing if the market and loot boxes weren't a thing. Having a loot pinata orc type is weird.

And to repeat, for me the worst part isn't the existence of the market and loot boxes. Those things are fine in a free-to-play game. But they are putting these things in a 60 € game. I like my single-player games to be self-contained pieces of entertainment. I pay for them, hopefully enjoy them, then buy expansions and DLC if I did.

To be fair some of the corporate folks behind this probably think adding microtransactions is a purely service to players. While they do like generating money, they're not gamers at heart and don't understand how including these things can taint the game design. More stuff to buy is a good thing right? More content? Pay to skip boring stuff? How can that be bad? Well, it's bad because to even add them changes the core game play experience. I can actually forgive business people for making this mistake - but I can't forgive the game designers that I know are pushing for this, and have been for years. I've met them, and heard about the vision of gaming they represent. It's all about appealing to instant gratification, shallow game design and focus groups. It's not the kind of games I want to play.

I hope my suspicions are proven wrong and Shadow of War is an awesome game, where you can indeed ignore the market and microtransactions, and still have a great experience. But I am going to wait for the reviews.

[Neonivek]

Those things are fine in a free-to-play game

Arguably... We are starting to learn quite a bit about how the Free-To-Play market works and the more we learn the less: Good Spirited Entrepreneurship it seems.

To be fair some of the corporate folks behind this probably think adding microtransactions is a purely service to players

Thankfully the answer to that is a resounding no. The current gaming market is they want to charge players for everything and they make no qualms about it being for the players themselves.

Whatever value is in Microtransactions is just a way to entice players to it.

---

Funny enough I'd be MUCH less concerned with these microtransactions if they just got the armor sets and gems directly.

It is only the loot crate format that makes me scowl in what horribly greedy devs (well, the people beyond the devs) they are. There is NO reason to do a Loot Crate format except to take advantage of addicts and/or rip people off.

It is scummy...

Or rather for me direct buy microtransactions are fine, albeit annoying with all the same horrible gameplay issues... Loot Crate is basically setting up a bar that only caters to alcoholics, or creating a bar where only half the drinks actually have alcohol in it and you won't say which.

[Ludorum Rex]

Yeah, I guess that's the cynical take on it

My point was more along the lines that a lot of business people don't really understand gaming, and see "selling more stuff" as a good thing for consumers. They can't see any problems with putting in loot for money. It's just goods and services for them. But I've talked to actual game designer who do know what the impact of this crap is, and they want that kind of gaming where you buy cheap thrills and pay you way past annoyances. To me that's a lot more problematic than suits being suits. Once the suits see backlash, poor reviews or even poor sales, they'll react. Or they'll see that there is a market for games without these things and want to produce both kinds of games. But designers who do not identify with their player base and represent a very different kind of gamer - they're the ones taking franchises and sequels, leveraging the goodwill and brand value in the pursuit of their personal visions for gaming.

When I wasn't an indie and was involved more with bigger studios and publishers, it was never my impression that the money guys were very involved in pushing DLC, microtransactions, etc. Preorders, yes, mostly because of the US market and the big retailers demanding preorder bonuses. But as for the rest, they just wanted good returns on investment, and studios were given very free hands in how to pursue that. Failure was certainly met with brutal retribution, as it is today. But I never heard about beancounters pushing that kind of stuff on studios, and I suspect it is a myth that many studios do nothing to silence, because it frees them of responsibility for shady decisions. It's the lead designers, producers and studio management who generally push for this. Not the corporate backers and publishers. At least that was my experience some years back.

Luckily there are good folks out there as well, studios doing the right thing and being actively consumer/gamer friendly. It's just annoying when a franchise gets trashed by someone who pseudo-gamers who don't even like the games that built the franchise. Or who want so badly to succeed financially that they sacrifice a lot more than the corporate overlords ever asked them to.

[Neonivek]

I am only speaking of what CEOs have said directly to their stockholders... and they CANNOT lie to their stockholders.

Or what Stockholders have said about games

It has been getting worse lately now that the writing is on the wall for how lucrative microtransactions are. CS:GO has earned billions just off those.

I never heard about beancounters pushing that kind of stuff on studios, and I suspect it is a myth that many studios do nothing to silence, because it frees them of responsibility for shady decisions

Well... Here is Four off the top of my head
1) Grand Theft auto 5
2) Dues Ex (the latest one... I cannot keep track of their names anymore)
3) Knight of Pen and Paper (It was changed later on... but yes they were forced to add microtransactions)
4) SimCity

If gaming didn't have this I'd have been MORE surprised. Movies, music, and comics all have had marketing or producers stick their hands into the pot.

[Ludorum Rex]

It's certainly possible it's gotten worse during the last couple of years, but I still hold designers who don't give push back (or willing tag along) on that trend responsible. I've seen too many producers and designers absolutely enamored by microtransactions, "games-as-a-service" and shallow design principles to make it all about the evil publishers and bean counters. Perhaps I am being overly optimistic, but I think we'll see the loot box craze come to end at some point, quite possibly due to being categorized as gambling by various governments

[Neonivek]

quite possibly due to being categorized as gambling by various governments

I hope so...

[Majestic7]

The gambling aspect is interesting, because in several countries gambling is a government monopoly. So a game with gambling element inside it would, legally speaking, be either illegal to sell in those countries or had to be run by the gambling monopoly of the government.. or run as a subsidiary giving all the income to that establishment. I bet that would kick the whole aspect to the shins really quickly. 

[nenjin]

I'm not so sure you can invoke the slippery slope fallacy when there's obvious motivation for a party to want to head down the slope, and you can see them standing next to the slope with a bucket of grease.

And yet....

Dominate a legendary orc, get a legendary orc follower. There's no RNG there.

Likewise....

Kill a Legendary Orc, get a legendary piece of gear. No RNG there either, that they've said so far. In fact they were quite explicit: you kill a legendary orc, you get a legendary piece of gear. It was not qualified.

So yeah, it's possible. But I imagine if release day comes and people are getting shit drops off of legendary orcs, they're going to be quite pissed because it's not what's advertised.

And systems like this generally aren't based around rarity; they're based around laziness and pain removal.

[Teneb]

Hopefully the microtransaction system will be like that of Dead Space 3 in that it was utterly useless and ignorable. But I guess it remains to be seen.

[lordcooper]

I'm not so sure you can invoke the slippery slope fallacy when there's obvious motivation for a party to want to head down the slope, and you can see them standing next to the slope with a bucket of grease.

And yet....

Dominate a legendary orc, get a legendary orc follower. There's no RNG there.

Likewise....

Kill a Legendary Orc, get a legendary piece of gear. No RNG there either, that they've said so far. In fact they were quite explicit: you kill a legendary orc, you get a legendary piece of gear. It was not qualified.

So yeah, it's possible. But I imagine if release day comes and people are getting shit drops off of legendary orcs, they're going to be quite pissed because it's not what's advertised.

And systems like this generally aren't based around rarity; they're based around laziness and pain removal.

I don't see what your response has to do with my statement.

A few ways they could 'encourage' people to pony up their cash: Decrease the number of legendary orcs roaming around in the game.  Require x, y and z to be done several times before one will spawn.  Massively buff their HP to make fighting them a pain.

And, well, there used to be a different way for people to cheat in games.  They were called cheats IIRC, and you didn't have to pay for them.

[Levi]

Meh, I think I'll just skip it on principle.  Especially with the 80 dollar Canadian price tag.

[Retropunch]

Problem is, the smart way to avoid massive backlash from making a game with added tedium to incentivise microtransactions is to implement it by inches.  Stick the microtransactions in a game that doesn't need them, then gradually up the grind in the expansions or sequels.

I think this is the core of the issue - it isn't that they'll go absolutely loony 2010 F2P style; they'll just gradually start shifting stuff more towards that. First it'll be this, then the inevitable next batman game will have a few areas which require microtransactions to access (but they're TOTALLY OPTIONAL!), and then Middle-earth 3: Shelob's Party Trousers will end up being the worlds first microtransaction based single player game. It might take a few more iterations, but that's definitely the way they want it to go. For now though, as Ludorum said, they HAVE to make the loot boxes have a point or it's just stupid putting them in. It'll just mean a harder grind and a less smooth completion curve.


This isn't gambling for those holding out hope. I see this getting tossed around a lot on all sorts of forums and pages, and having once worked with various countries gambling commissions I can say you'll be very, very hard pressed to get this classified as gambling in most of the world (especially the parts that pay out the majority of the money).

For stuff to be classified as gambling you'd have to have the potential to lose money or not gain anything by playing, however the loot you get in most boxes is completely subjective. Think about it like normal drops in Diablo/PoE/etc. - yeah, your character doesn't need an strength gem as they're a mage, but it's not objectively useless. They're ALWAYS giving you something, so it's a transaction rather than gambling.

[forsaken1111]

By that logic casinos could get around gambling laws by giving you a napkin if you 'lose' a bet and it's no longer gambling because you won something even if its not valuable it's not objectively useless.

[Neonivek]

By that logic casinos could get around gambling laws by giving you a napkin if you 'lose' a bet and it's no longer gambling because you won something even if its not valuable it's not objectively useless.

Plus not every place has the same gambling law.

In Texas it isn't considered Gambling so long as money isn't received back.

In Canada even the claw machines are covered under gambling.

[nenjin]

I'm not so sure you can invoke the slippery slope fallacy when there's obvious motivation for a party to want to head down the slope, and you can see them standing next to the slope with a bucket of grease.

And yet....

Dominate a legendary orc, get a legendary orc follower. There's no RNG there.

Likewise....

Kill a Legendary Orc, get a legendary piece of gear. No RNG there either, that they've said so far. In fact they were quite explicit: you kill a legendary orc, you get a legendary piece of gear. It was not qualified.

So yeah, it's possible. But I imagine if release day comes and people are getting shit drops off of legendary orcs, they're going to be quite pissed because it's not what's advertised.

And systems like this generally aren't based around rarity; they're based around laziness and pain removal.

I don't see what your response has to do with my statement.

A few ways they could 'encourage' people to pony up their cash: Decrease the number of legendary orcs roaming around in the game.  Require x, y and z to be done several times before one will spawn.  Massively buff their HP to make fighting them a pain.

And, well, there used to be a different way for people to cheat in games.  They were called cheats IIRC, and you didn't have to pay for them.

My response has to do with your statement because you act like there's a roulette wheel to spin on deciding what you get. Have you watched any of the dev streams, gameplay videos, any of that? Because that's not how it's been presented.

I mean, as fun as it is to come up with potential conspiracy theories about how WB would force Monolith to drive people toward the cash shop by screwing with things in game....it seems very unlikely. Everything they've shown about the game so far makes it seem very difficult to me to suddenly back away from the legendary orcs and gear getting acquired the way it's been presented (Please read above. Again.)

And even then. I had trouble getting some orcs in SoM to actually become "legendary." They just wouldn't seem to do it except under weirdly arbitrary circumstances. SoM had no cash shop for this stuff. Would we know the difference in SoW, and honestly, would anyone here give a shit at the end of the day and pay money? I doubt it. At least I know I wouldn't. Just like in F2P games where I don't feel the compulsion to pay hard cash for the newest thing they've released, because I'm happy to bide my time and wait for it to drop just by playing the game.

So while I'd like to make a protest vote with my wallet, at this point it's like pissing in the wind. It didn't stop EA, whoever the fuck makes CoD these days, every F2P game made in the last 2 years, CS:GO, Killing Floor, Overwatch.....loot crates are just a fact of life now. So to me it's like boycotting a game you want because it's only on Steam. Sure, you can be principled, but 99% of the rest of the gaming world is going to shrug their shoulders and the game will succeed financially for the publishers anyways.