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    IAmSpartacusJason Schreier
    5/28/18 11:28am

    *sheepishly raises hand*

    I don’t mind loot boxes when they’re 100% cosmetic and optional, especially for live online games that require years of maintenance. If it helps the devs keep their games updated/keep their jobs in a world where video games are exponentially more costly to make yet are sold for the same price, I think it’s not that bad of a compromise.

    But again, 100% cosmetic and optional, ala Overwatch. Shit like Star Wars Battlefront II is unacceptable.

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      Jason SchreierIAmSpartacus
      5/28/18 11:31am

      Wouldn’t you rather just be able to buy what you want? I think cosmetic MTX in $60 games are never going away, but they feel far less predatory when you can just go to a shop and pick whatever skins or hats you want rather than rolling the dice in hopes you’ll get that rare Junkrat outfit you’ve been craving.

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      goodlooksmcgeeJason Schreier
      5/28/18 11:39am

      The whole idea of the gambling portion is basically a way for them to sell skins a dozen times instead of outright because of the throw of RNG dice. No one has had problems with outright buying skins since Horse Armor, because it is content. Loot boxes are just a chance to unlock content.

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    CHRONICpeaceJason Schreier
    5/28/18 11:28am

    While this is good news, I feel a little trepidation. What model are they going to use that allows them to generate revenue without selling DLC or loot boxes? Direct cosmetic purchases? That’ll be ideal. But what are the prices going to be?

    Since it’s EA, I’m going to say it’s something drastic. I’m placing money on a “wait to play or pay to play” model. You finish a online match and have to either wait 5 minutes to play another match or sink in $1 to jump immediately into the next game. Sorta how mobile games put timers in their game.

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      Jason SchreierCHRONICpeace
      5/28/18 11:29am

      I appreciate your cynicism, but there is a 0% chance that will happen.

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      WhiteWolfofRiviaCHRONICpeace
      5/28/18 11:41am

      There’s no way that’s happening. Can you imagine the shit storm?

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    OMG!PONIES!Jason Schreier
    5/28/18 12:07pm

    Unpopular opinion:

    Maybe game publishers should increase margins by raising prices above $60.

    $60 has been the price of a video game for over two decades now. The original Tomb Raider game cost $60 in 1996. Adjusted for inflation, it would cost over $95 now.

    I don’t advocate loot boxes. But I do advocate game companies being able to make a profit. Maybe we should put the magic $60 price tag out to pasture.

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      wtf_GOMG!PONIES!
      5/28/18 12:13pm

      I don’t pity these big name publishers and their profit margins.

      How do we have any games these days that don’t have marketplace purchases? By the logic that games cost so damn much, no company should survive that doesn’t do it.

      Some of the best games I’ve played this year had zero purchases available. Pretty sure those studios are doing just fine too.

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      rogueIndyOMG!PONIES!
      5/28/18 12:22pm

      I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the industry needs to bring back B games. Let the AAAs sit at 80, then lower-budget titles can release at 60 without having to compete with the blockbusters.

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    CrazyIvanTRJason Schreier
    5/28/18 11:23am

    No loot boxes! We have cards that you can trade for items instead! You can buy a pack of cards for just $4.95!

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      CrazyIvanTRCrazyIvanTR
      5/28/18 11:24am

      It’ll probably be something along those lines. I’ll stay skeptical until game’s release and reviews.

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      rogueIndyCrazyIvanTR
      5/28/18 12:16pm

      ooh, ooh, is there a shiny card in every pack?

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    DianaDoe2.0Jason Schreier
    5/28/18 11:33am

    DLC maps won’t cost money? That’s bigger news than no lootboxes, DLC maps have plagued the industry for nearly a decade and were far worse than lootboxes could ever be. You were paying money to maybe play on a map if there was a DLC playlist, but if there wasn’t, you would rarely, if ever see the maps you paid money for.

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      rogueIndyDianaDoe2.0
      5/28/18 12:18pm

      “and were far worse than lootboxes could ever be”

      Nah. DLC maps just ruin the game, gambling addiction ruins lives.

      Also, “mapboxes”. Bam, instantly worse :P

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      NecronautDianaDoe2.0
      5/28/18 4:56pm

      I mean, that was also one of the marketing points they drummed up last year when they announced Battlefront II. Fast forward some months and we found out the caveat was the loot-box nonsense that got us into the shitshow that brings us here.

      So, clearly, if we have learned something is to not get too excited about “no DLC maps” until they outline exactly how they are gonna monetize this then.

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    ApocalypticBoredomJason Schreier
    5/28/18 12:54pm

    The evolution of video games from buy-em-once products to play-em-forever services is not going to stop.

    I think this statement should be qualified. Big blockbuster multiplayer games might be turning into perpetual services, but single-purchase games are thriving too. Sure, Fortnight and other competitive shooters get a lot of the press when it comes to “gamers” but they do not represent the entire medium, just as Marvel movies do not represent all of cinema. Only when discussed in pure economic terms are the Marvel movies important, for instance - they do nothing to innovate moviemaking itself. Similarly, loot boxes were an economic innovation, not a gaming one.

    Personally, I’ve never had as much choice when it comes to single player, story driven games as I do now.

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    IshamaelJason Schreier
    5/28/18 11:47am

    The market at work. The best way to show ones displeasure to a corporation is with your money. When Battlefront 2 sold a million copies less then expected it showed this controversy was real. That is the difference between online anger and actual anger, when people don’t buy the damn thing.

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      wtf_GIshamael
      5/28/18 12:15pm

      But really, that was probably the only game recently to really be under scrutiny, when a vast majority of big name titles do this. GTA’s online mode is basically unplayable unless you’re willing to drop cash, but there’s no real outcry, just a few snide remarks here and there.

      It’s been said that these companies aren’t making money off the 15 year olds playing, it’s the few individuals that spend thousands.

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      rogueIndywtf_G
      5/28/18 12:23pm

      There’s a difference between normal microtransactions and lootboxes. The random element in the latter taps into the same impulses that gambling does, making it an unethically exploitative practise.

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    unpronounceableJason Schreier
    5/28/18 8:17pm

    If we put aside the legality of loot boxes and gambling, I can’t help but wonder how people would feel about, and how profitable loot boxes and direct purchases would be. Make all items available in the loot boxes available to purchase directly, and individually, but also offer loot boxes. The values could easily be tuned to give more value per dollar than direct purchases. Hell, how would a combined system be received if the boxes were just offered as a gameplay reward?

    I can’t think of a game that uses this kind of system, and I fee like it’s a space worth exploring. Or it would if companies hadn’t gone too far with loot boxes anyway.

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      NobleVicesunpronounceable
      5/29/18 10:40am

      Path of Exile (action RPG, Diablo-esque) has been doing something along those lines for a few years now. It’s a free to play game, paid for by primarily cosmetic microtransactions and a small amount of convenience microtransactions (such as more stash tabs for storing items, etc). There are no microtransactions that affect active gameplay.

      PoE has regular “leagues”, each several months long that act somewhat as expansions, and each league usually drops with a themed set of cosmetic microtransactions. While the league is going, you can get loot boxes that contain only those microtransactions, each box worth at least the cost of the lowest-priced thing inside it (with many things worth far, far more, and the odds displayed and nothing insane about them—no one percent chances or anything). The snag is that during the league, you can only get them via boxes, but if you simply wait a few months, you can buy anything from that group in the store forever after like any other set of items. So I suppose the lootbox mechanic has some of that predatory element to people who want the newest thing right now, but overall I think it’s a pretty good system.

      (It also has league microtransactions that can only be gotten via achievements/playing, but that’s a whole other thing.)

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    chaos2992Jason Schreier
    5/28/18 12:42pm

    Lootboxes specifically, but there will still be microtransactions. Until those are gone completely, there is no reason to let up the pressure on EA. I understand people talking about cosmetic stuff being okay but not too long ago, we got cosmetic stuff FREE, as unlocks! The whole speech about how they need them to keep making money because games are more expensive to make is total BS! Yes games have bigger budgets, but games now sell WAY more copies than they did back when budgets were small. Not to mention if you factor in digital sales, it becomes even more rediculous. Video games are now a global industry, not the tiny little business it used to be back in the days of pong. The truth is as always will be that micrtransactions are a scheme to widen profit margins beyond what is necessary. They are purely coporate greed and there is no reason to condone even cosmetic ones. The little guys will still get paid and the big guys will still take a bigger cut than is reasonable for doing less work. Even multi-million dollar games make back their investment easy probably in the first day or two as long as it doesnt suck.

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    Gatling216Jason Schreier
    5/28/18 11:25am

    I’m certainly not going to complain, but I get the feeling that something far more insidious is waiting just around the corner.

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      OmikiasGatling216
      5/28/18 11:30am

      Similar wait-and-see mentality for Anthem. Got this gut-feeling that EA is going to sneak some BS into that game and then throw BioWare under the bus. EA may as well stand for End of Amusements

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