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Loot Crates: Ever feel like you've been cheated?

Charles Brandon

Charles Brandon

Member
There has been a great deal of chat about loot crates recently. I have not been able to engage because I have been banned but there is something I wanted to share.

Firstly, I apologise if this is already part of the discussion and common knowledge. If so, please say and/or delete if required.

Secondly, this post is informed partly by the views of an 'insider'. I'm not going to say who that is or anything about them but this isn't just stuff I have shat out of my brain.

Geoff, get to the point!

OK, so, reading the discussions online a lot of the ire seems to revolve around the fact that people get sucked into paying extra for loot crates to 'win' game stuff that should really be a standard part of a full priced game. People are also angry about children getting involved in what appears to be something very close to gambling.

But what if it isn't gambling?

What if loot crates are a straight up scam?

What if the game reads your status and populates your loot crate with just the right mix of items, designed by an algorithm not to give you what you want, not to give you nothing but to tease you, to make it look like that gun is just around the corner or that the game does give upgrades just not for the gun your currently holding. It's just bad luck. Maybe next time will be better. What if you only get that item when the game thinks you've spent enough or there is a bigger, better item on the horizon to tease you with?

Are loot crates random? Why should they be? How is a publisher going to make money if you get every thing you need on the first drop? Why shouldn't they, legally, manipulate the drops to manipulate your wallet?

People should be asking publishers and developers for percentages and odds and models.
 
L

LucidMomentum

Member
Every Time.

With Dota 2, TI4 I could just buy the skins I liked.

TI5 through 7, they had loot boxes and it sucked. If I only liked half of the skins in a box but got those half instead of the half I liked, welp.

Due to the nature of them it's never a 1-1 sell / trade because people know you're only selling stuff that's rare or you don't want.
 
J

JPS Kai

Member
Can I include the Rare Egg Machine from Puzzle & Dragons?

I'd like to return all of these Chesters and Zu'Oh chilling in my box.
 
V

Volimar

Member
What if the game reads your status and populates your loot crate with just the right mix of items, designed by an algorithm not to give you what you want, not to give you nothing but to tease you, to make it look like that gun is just around the corner or that the game does give upgrades just not for the gun your currently holding. It's just bad luck. Maybe next time will be better. What if you only get that item when the game thinks you've spent enough or there is a bigger, better item on the horizon to tease you with?
Click to expand...

Do you have any evidence that this is the case?
 
L

Linkark07

Banned
Only time I bought loot crates in Overwatch and I completely regret it.

Lunar Year event and didn't get a single skin related to that.

That said, I almost bought another set of loot boxes but thankfully managed to control myself.
 
Audioboxer

Audioboxer

Member
I've bought some in the F2P Neverwinter MMO. Got absolute shit, never bought them again. The drop rates for legendaries in that game must be 1% or lower. I guess I felt that was a waste of my money afterwards, and unsurprisingly I'd rather just pay for getting what I want rather than a chance to roll a dice. What I did buy besides that in Neverwinter was the Dragonborn pack when it was on sale to unlock another race and some extras.

Never once spent money in any mobile F2P games. I've bought a couple of mobile games that cost money traditionally. I'm ultimately not a big mobile gamer so that market just isn't for me. No, I'm not someone who doesn't see them as real games, I've just never really been interested in playing games on my phone. Outside of occasional time wasters if waiting in the dentist or on public transport.

I think I've put the lottery on a handful of times, and my bets on football will be on two hands or less for my lifetime. I'm just not a big gambler and never have been. Thankfully my dopamine rushes come from elsewhere.

I posted this article from 2013 today in another topic, I recommend anyone who enjoys reading, reads it

Chasing the Whale: Examining the ethics of free-to-play games

This story is being highlighted as one of Gamasutra's best stories of 2013.
Click to expand...

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/195806/chasing_the_whale_examining_the_.php
 
888

888

Member
Each time I don't get the skin I want. I would rather just buy what I want vs loot boxes.
 
C

Canucked

Member
I often felt irritated that overwatch would give me so much stuff I already had. But not "cheated". I did get luckier than most with event crates it seems so I'm generally happy with it.
 
Charles Brandon

Charles Brandon

Member
Volimar said:
Do you have any evidence that this is the case?
Click to expand...

I have a source but I can't say anything about who that is. Which is obviously not very helpful and does not add much to my credibility.

All I can say is, gamers, look at what you're getting, does it really seem random to you? Do you always get enhancements for gear item x when you're using gear item y and then, when you switch to gear item x the reverse happens? How often do you get a killer drop straight off the bat?

Also, why the fuck would it be random if doing it a different way makes more money?
 
I

In Flames

Neo Member
I dislike loot crates, both in game and in real life.

I feel like Overwatch's are some of the least egregious though.
 
R

Roubjon

Member
No because I knew I was spending $20 on blindboxes in Overwatch. I usually got a couple of cool things out of it, but never everything. Sometimes nothing I even wanted, but I got what I paid for.

I've also learned my lesson and I'll never buy them again. At least not until I can afford the risk.
 
Z

Z3M0G

Member
Paid only $1.99 or $2.99 for some kind of crate in the Titanfall mobile game and it still felt like a complete waste... I don't even think there was anything incredibly random about it so that may be on me.

I don't believe I've ever paid for an actual loot crate in a game. I only paid for very specific things.
 
Razzorn34

Razzorn34

Member
Geoff said:
People should be asking publishers and developers for percentages and odds and models.
Click to expand...

This right here. You have no idea if you were getting screwed or not because no one in the US has to post odds. They could be making some very sought after items increasingly rare compared to others if they wanted to. Asian mobile games did a ton of this.
 
LordRaptor

LordRaptor

Member
Geoff said:
Also, why the fuck would it be random if doing it a different way makes more money?
Click to expand...

if (rand < epicchance) { dropepic(); }
else if (rand < rarechance) { droprare(); }
else if (rand < uncommonchance) { dropuncommon(); }
else { dropcommon(); }

versus AI subroutines utilising player inventory + player telemetry + heuristics
 
S

Servbot24

Banned
I might buy games I never play, but I'm still not enough of a chump to buy lootboxes.

However I have felt cheated out of time in some RPGs where I'm repeatedly killing the same enemy and waiting for a rare drop.
 
A

Alienous

Member
I've never bought a loot box, but of the ones I've earned I've never felt like the game was cheating.

I have thought about how a game could do it though. "Is the player hovering over this gun camo in a menu -> reduce their odds of getting it in a lootbox" sorts of things. I'd hope that no developer/publisher is brazen enough to try it though.
 
G

Gaspard

Member
I only bought lootboxes once for Overwatch and I knew what I was getting into buying them so I didn't feel cheated at all.
 
Charles Brandon

Charles Brandon

Member
LordRaptor said:
if (rand < epicchance) { dropepic(); }
else if (rand < rarechance) { droprare(); }
else if (rand < uncommonchance) { dropuncommon(); }
else { dropcommon(); }

versus AI subroutines utilising player inventory + player telemetry + heuristics
Click to expand...

OK, first one is obviously easier to code but if the second one takes in much more money...

This is stuff IS happening. Maybe not every game but more than you think. Because £$€.
 
S

Scizzy

Member
I would be very surprised if that were the case. Loot crates would be incredibly profitable if they were "fair" and if you rig the stats it would take only one whistle blower to destroy the business altogether.
 
J

Jrs3000

Member
I never felt cheated because I dont waste real money on them. It does suck what is normally a item you could earn in game through earning points is now left to random. There's skins I wanted in overwatch but likely will never get due to the dumb loot boxes and them only being available at certain times.
 
Charles Brandon

Charles Brandon

Member
Scizzy said:
I would be very surprised if that were the case. Loot crates would be incredibly profitable if they were "fair" and if you rig the stats it would take only one whistle blower to destroy the business altogether.
Click to expand...

What do you think this thread is?

I have been told, by someone who would know, that it happens.
 
R

Robaperas

Junior Member
I bought a key for a Rocket League box, thinking you get every item inside said box like you would in real life, so when I just got a crappy looking decal, I felt more disappointed than cheated. After that I opted out of the loot boxes drops.
 
C

CookTrain

Member
I guess once you decide they're not gambling, they can be as rigged as you want them to be. How many advertise their contents as random in explicit language?

This thread is a little tricky to parse with the nod-and-wink allusions to evidence though.
 
C

Crankshaft

Member
I bought overwatch loot boxes in the beginning and was happy with the drops. Then they updated the game to make it easier to get loot boxes for free and noticed the substantial drop in getting anything good. So I stopped buying any boxes for Overwatch.
 
LordRaptor

LordRaptor

Member
Geoff said:
OK, first one is obviously easier to code but if the second one takes in much more money...

This is stuff IS happening. Maybe not every game but more than you think. Because £$€.
Click to expand...

I'm sure this does happen in the F2P space, because that is literally the sole revenue stream, and F2P games have literal teams whose entire job is based on analytics, with changes made on an extremely regular basis based on those analytics.
You also have examples where a single player can affect the entire game as a result, because if the main revenue stream likes things that are blue more than things that are green, you'd best believe upcoming content adds are gonna be blue.

I don't believe the lootcrates of the types of games that GAF concern themselves with bother nickel and diming like that when the money spent paying a team to do so could just go to a youtube influencer or whatever instead.
 
M

muteki

Member
Somehow the closest experience to Loot Crates I have come is mobile Gatcha games. And very often there I end up getting shit but I also don't put money in them so I don't really feel cheated. Maybe for my time, but that is all.

For home console stuff just looking at the calendar there isn't really anything of significant interest to me that has that style of mechanic, though I imagine it would turn up eventually. Don't really think I would approach it any differently than I do mobile stuff however.
 
T

TAD

Member
They don't want that to be the case though, they want that guy who bought one pack/box/crate and got the super good item he wanted because it makes people think, "Woah, that could be me!". For every one of those people that might only ever buy one create, you've got people that bought 50 before they got something good.

Plus if you had everyone on Steam or Reddit going "I bought 20 loot crates and didn't get a single good item" you'd end up with a shit storm because people would know they were being cheated. The whole point of a random chance is that you COULD get the amazing thing you want, you know the odds are against you, but you COULD.
 
Charles Brandon

Charles Brandon

Member
CookTrain said:
I guess once you decide they're not gambling, they can be as rigged as you want them to be. How many advertise their contents as random in explicit language?

This thread is a little tricky to parse with the nod-and-wink allusions to evidence though.
Click to expand...

I am sorry about the vagueness but I'm sure you can appreciate why.
 
jryeje29

jryeje29

Member
I don't think the theory is true, at least for the only game I have bought "loot crates" in, which is the mobile game Dragon Ball Z Dokkan, plus they at least give you an estimate of the rates. You have a about a 1 in 10 chance of pulling the second highest pullable card type in the game which is SSR. The thing is there are hundreds of different SSRs so you will more thank likely not get the SSR you want but to get an SSR it's 1 in 10. On the dokkan reddit people have done thousands of calculations and found it to be about a 0.5% chance to get the SSR you want. If you want an LR which is the highest pullable type of card in the game they calculated you have like a 0.25 to 0.33 chance of getting one.

TL;DR I dont think its a straight up scam but instead the odds are so low that it still feels like it anyway.
 
L

Linkstrikesback

Member
Not cheated, but I spent some money on what we would probably call loot boxes now on some MMOs... Probably a decade or so ago, and came to the conclusion that I couldn't understand why anyone would spend money on this junk, if it wasn't playing off the same habits that are behind gambling addiction.
 
N

Nabbis

Member
People should be boycotting the games that do this. Asking companies ain't gonna do shit if you still give them money.

Even if you don't buy loot crates, they will still put them out there for the whales for some additional revenue. The only other way is to prove that sales are hurting due to loot boxes and the whale money is not enough to counter that.
 
A

Alienous

Member
TAD said:
They don't want that to be the case though, they want that guy who bought one pack/box/crate and got the super good item he wanted because it makes people think, "Woah, that could be me!". For every one of those people that might only ever buy one create, you've got people that bought 50 before they got something good.

Plus if you had everyone on Steam or Reddit going "I bought 20 loot crates and didn't get a single good item" you'd end up with a shit storm because people would know they were being cheated. The whole point of a random chance is that you COULD get the amazing thing you want, you know the odds are against you, but you COULD.
Click to expand...

I don't think that's what the OP is saying, just that Loot Boxes (in some instances) use player information to tailor the experience of receiving stuff.

For instance, let's take Overwatch as an example. If the game knows you main Genji it could, in theory, decide to reduce the odds of you getting a Genji Legendary Skin, and increase the odds of getting a Legendary Skin for the other characters. The effect of this could be you buying Loot Boxes, thinking that if you're getting other Legendary Skins you're just as likely to get a Genji one (the one you want) eventually. You'd still feel like you're getting a lot of stuff, just coincidentally not the stuff you want.

I've thought the above would be plausible for a while now due to the lack of regulation. Not necessarily Overwatch though.
 
Charles Brandon

Charles Brandon

Member
TAD said:
They don't want that to be the case though, they want that guy who bought one pack/box/crate and got the super good item he wanted because it makes people think, "Woah, that could be me!". For every one of those people that might only ever buy one create, you've got people that bought 50 before they got something good.

Plus if you had everyone on Steam or Reddit going "I bought 20 loot crates and didn't get a single good item" you'd end up with a shit storm because people would know they were being cheated. The whole point of a random chance is that you COULD get the amazing thing you want, you know the odds are against you, but you COULD.
Click to expand...

This is true but maybe you're thinking too simplistically. What's to stop them seeding rare items so people know it is 'possible' including seeding them to influences?

And the point is not that you never get the good item but that you only get what you need to keep buying. So you probably will get that item but only when a) you've paid in enough and b) the game knows there is another rare item on the horizon to tease you with. You'll never get that item straight away though (unless it's been seeded to you).

Alienous said:
For instance, let's take Overwatch as an example. If the game knows you main Genji it could, in theory, decide to reduce the odds of you getting a Genji Legendary Skin, and increase the odds of getting a Legendary Skin for the other characters. The effect of this could be you buying Loot Boxes, thinking that if you're getting other Legendary Skins you're just as likely to get a Genji one (the one you want) eventually. You'd still feel like you're getting a lot of stuff, just coincidentally not the stuff you want.
Click to expand...

This is EXACTLY what I mean (although I think you mean chances instead of odds). I'm not calling out that game in particular and I don't know if that really happens in Overwatch but that is an example of what I'm talking about.
 
S

ShaithEatery

Neo Member
So I'm one of those dummies that pays monthly for mmo's I don't play anymore because I forgot about it and didn't keep track. So long story short, in Elder Scrolls Online I had over 20,000 of their crowns currency (about $150 worth if you bought it outright). After buying the traveling merchant and banker as those seemed useful, I was going to buy a few of the cool halloween mounts they have been advertising. NOPE, can only obtain those through their halloween loot boxes.

So I took the plunge and spent the rest of my crowns on as many boxes as I could get, which in the end was maybe 20-30 boxes, and while I did get one of the mounts it wasn't the one I wanted at all, and the other stuff was all just filler. They previously had made their premium mounts available to just buy via crowns, so you could just get what you wanted and be done with it. But no, they had to follow the loot box model and now I feel like I could have used all of those extra crowns for something else that would have been much more worth it.
 
P

Pooya

Member
everytime I open a HS card pack, you get a blue and 4 white 90 percent of the time. I'm like wow, they sell this for something like 2 bucks. I seldom ever buy packs or lootboxes unless it's part of some huge bundle for a big discount or you get something like some guaranteed rare item along with it. You will always lose out on buying them if you do the math. every time.
 
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