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[blakep267]

I think I know why.

Halo 5 did it kinda arguably perfect. Yes, some things need to be able to be earned WITHOUT RNG. But in terms of the pace at which you earn packs, the things you get in them etc. halo 5 did a great job.

but halo 5 had a LOOTTTTTT to unlock. It still does.

Gears? Not so much.Character skins are almost all the same 4 types. Some gun skins are cool but again, most of these are repeating.

The truth is, gears of war 4 doesnt have all that much to unlock.

granted, if you hover over these things, almost all of them say "revision one" or "launch series". So they absolutely plan on adding more.

And how much you wanna bet after adding a bucket of new unlocks, all the sudden credits are easier to earn?

If theres not a lot to unlock, the colition has to artificially lengthen the time it takes to get everything, or else whats the point of things being rare in the first place?

Is it a good idea? Fucking no. Should they fix it? For sure, just let people earn at a reasonable rate. There is no goddam way I should FINISH a round of horde which takes multiple hours and not get anywhere close to a new pack. Thats nothing but infuriating for the player.

I think that's the reason the payouts are low. There aren't enough unlockables. Halo 5 has thousands of things to unlock. I've been playing for a year and still haven't gotten everything. If we could get a gears pack every hour, they'd run out of stuff in a few weeks. I've only been able to get 2 elite packs and I'm like level 45 been playing for 15 or so hours

 

[Novocaine]

I've been able to afford a new Horde pack after a 20 wave session each time. That comment in the OP about not being able to afford them seems weird.

But that eSports pack that lasted a day. Fuck that kind of shit man.

 

[Leyasu]

Them esport packs though...

The fact that nearly everyone talks about getting power weapon or pick up weapon skins shows you how they cynically loaded the dice. 
 
 
Then throw in the duplicates and you have all the evidence you need to see just how disgusting and vile these cretins are. Damn I love the game, but this thing stinks. 
 
It should have been one skin plus weapons. But then how could they reel in the fools that were splashing down hundreds?? 
 
Damn sad and shocking incident that transpired yesterday.

 

[Crankshaft]

So in Gears 3 the only way to unlock skins was to grind multiplayer and level up to unlock a handful of skins. If you wanted gun skins you had to pay out of pocket.

With Gears 4, they added in a ton of character and gun skins and made it so everything you do in multiplayer earns you points so you can roll a lottery and get some skins.

So people are mad about having the option of paying money for the lottery. What do people want? The Gears 3 system? No way to get gun skins unless you pay money? But you at least get what you paid for?

 

[Skinpop]

One of the reasons overwatch does it well is because win or lose, you gain reasonable XP and after about 60-90 minutes of playing you get a loot box, you can be a bad player but still earn boxes at a reasonable rate.

They are also all pure cosmetics, no damage boosters for horde mode or anything gameplay changing.

overwatch's business model is still absolutely abhorrent though. there's nothing "well" about about it all. it bothers me that people are so quick to defend these companies.

 

[Hjod]

Such disgusting casino terminology finding its way into regular game design is realy sad, and as a result, economy specialists and behavioral psychologists have become bigger players in the design of big modern games after the whole Facebook games boom, which later matured into F2P game models and has now been added to premium games because hey, why not!

Crafting microtransaction models that prey on people predisposed to spending more money on that kind of stuff is seriously not what I wish game companies were focusing on. If the argument is that you need more money to create bigger and better looking games at a $60 price tag, then I'd argue that having to implement underhanded casino tactics to rake in additional cash (and for profit, because of course being a shareholder is about wanting companies to maximize their profits so that their dividends go up in turn) is not the way to go, and that maybe the obsession with technical features that are proving to be so much of a time and money sink, while understandable, is also undermining AAA game development.

Thankfully, AAA games are no longer alone in the industry at the very least, so there's always another game or developer to fall back on if your game of choice ends up being a microtransaction trojan horse.

Really well put, sums up my feelings about the whole micro transaction situation. As someone who lost a close friend to gambling addiction the whole talk about whales makes me really uneasy. They can add as much micro transactions as they want but when it's in the form of gambling for stuff you want it turns into something else.

 

[Deadstar]

Really don't like how slow it is to gain credits in horde. Microtransactions should always ONLY be for cosmetics. It ruins the game really. I'm not paying real money for a single pack if I just bought the new game. There's just no way, but getting cards for horde mode is so slow it's frustrating. These should have been unlocked by leveling up your character. Each level of your character should have given you more powerful cards going all the way to 10.

 

[Fracas]

The argument that big pretty games cost too much to make is also crap when applied to Gears of War 4, specifically.

It's shorter than any previous Gears of War.

There's less cinematics, less characters, less campaign levels.

The visuals are not a quantum leap above Gears of War 3 in terms of modeling, texture work, or effects. There's not that many big set pieces.

It launches with 10 maps. Extra maps will cost money to permanently own them.

Horde mode reuses the same 10 maps.

Its cosmetic work involves only a few alternate character models, and is mostly painted skins for weapons and a handful for characters.

In short there's less game for a $60 price tag than the previous big game in the series, Gears of War 3. And in GoW3, many of the unlockables and bonuses were earned through gameplay and in-game challenges, not microtransaction gambling. There was a seaso pass, but it had a fairly large amount of content for the money.

I'm not inherently against loot crates or micro. In a few games, they don't feel terrible because there's already a lot of content and the game is robust. Halo 5 is actually pretty great, being stuffed with content before you get to the loot packs.

But many games suffer from the problem that Gears of War 4 does: the existence of loot crates and micro-transaction gambling is a ready excuse to ship a game with less features, bonuses, length, and content than previous generations.

This is one of the most ignorant posts I think I've read on this forum

 

[Giftofgab24]

And in Gears even getting the 1k Operations pack can take quite some time. It's awful.

For cosmetic packs that affect gameplay in no way. The horde booster that everyone seems to be complaining about is 2/5ths the price of the operations pack. Seems like it's more people being upset that they can't get the skins they want easily.

 

[aBarreras]

Uh... pretty sure that's what I just did.

you stated it as a fact,

i mean is cool if you didnt liked it, but some others loved it

 

[JJD]

Because games that cost $200 million to make need additional revenue streams to make profit and keep developers working. It's a pretty simple concept. i couldn't care less about cosmetics and the horde booster packs are a lot cheaper than the cosmetic ones so I have no issues with it.

The cost of modern AAA.
You want games bigger, longer, prettier, more content for same $60, better accept that and let whales fund part of it.

Gears 4 didn't cost 200 million to make. And the game is quite short. It's a really good game, but frankly there is no excuse for the way they are handling micro transactions.

 

[hwalker84]

I don't think they're out of control but the tuning to get items needs to be tweaked.

 

[johnnydrama]

Are you telling me these games cant turn a profit without all of this stuff?

That's exactly what I'm saying. Gears 4 has a AAA-grade 8-hour campaign with state of the art tech implementations, a Horde mode, and a PvP mode. On top of that, the game was built from the ground up in less than three years, which is increasingly rare this generation. Imagine the man hours spent accomplishing all of that. And then you go into Gears and Forza threads on NeoGAF and you have entitled manbabies with their "graphics are meh" bullshit posts. People want lifelike graphics and the biggest games, but aren't willing to accept the costs associated with these demands. How much do you think they spent on Gears 4, including marketing? Easily between $80 and $100 million. Do you think that Microsoft, a software company through and through, would look at this time and money investment of three years and go, "Okay we have made $30 million profit on the biggest release of one of our biggest franchises. Pack it up boys, we are rich now"? These games cost the same damn base price to the consumer they used to cost a decade ago. Just look at the graphical improvements, the new modes added, the increasing scale, the marketing costs, economic inflation, increasing salaries, and a ton of other factors.

Give me a good game that looks alright. I don't mind average graphics. Innovative games don't come out of the AAA industry anyway. But that's not what the rest of the market wants. The market wants blockbusters. And you can't sell blockbusters for cheap with the budgets you've got. Microtransactions are awful, but they're here to stay. Provided, Gears 4 model is straight up terrible, and could be better, but yeah, this general trend isn't going anywhere.

The argument that big pretty games cost too much to make is also crap when applied to Gears of War 4, specifically.

It's shorter than any previous Gears of War.

There's less cinematics, less characters, less campaign levels.

The visuals are not a quantum leap above Gears of War 3 in terms of modeling, texture work, or effects. There's not that many big set pieces.

It launches with 10 maps. Extra maps will cost money to permanently own them.

Horde mode reuses the same 10 maps.

Its cosmetic work involves only a few alternate character models, and is mostly painted skins for weapons and a handful for characters.

In short there's less game for a $60 price tag than the previous big game in the series, Gears of War 3. And in GoW3, many of the unlockables and bonuses were earned through gameplay and in-game challenges, not microtransaction gambling. There was a seaso pass, but it had a fairly large amount of content for the money.

I'm not inherently against loot crates or micro. In a few games, they don't feel terrible because there's already a lot of content and the game is robust. Halo 5 is actually pretty great, being stuffed with content before you get to the loot packs.

But many games suffer from the problem that Gears of War 4 does: the existence of loot crates and micro-transaction gambling is a ready excuse to ship a game with less features, bonuses, length, and content than previous generations.

So this game was made for six hunnit and fiddy dollars, you reckon then? Greedy devs?

 

[a Master Ninja]

They should have copied the halo 5 req system, I feel like I'm always progressing and opening packs in that game.

I'd rather Halo 5 not have it at all, but yeah, if Microsoft games NEED microtransactions that is tolerable.

 

[JulianImp]

Really well put, sums up my feelings about the whole micro transaction situation. As someone who lost a close friend to gambling addiction the whole talk about whales makes me really uneasy. They can add as much micro transactions as they want but when it's in the form of gambling for stuff you want it turns into something else.

That's exactly my gripe with gacha "game mechanics". Random is never random in the world of computing, and when you take a system that can tweak its odds at will without having to answer to anybody and add economists behavioral psychologists' know-how for conditioning people towards wanting to roll the dice "just one more time", then you've got a recipe for disaster.

Loot crates are just something I wish we could erradicate from "game design" (read: behavioral conditioning 101), but of course they're insanely more profitable than people paying a known amound of money to get exactly what they want. Why? Because people who are fixated on getting a particular item might end up rolling the dice over and over until they get it, and the microtransaction "designers" tweak the skinner box's values to make sure those so-called whales are milked for all they're worth, and help pay for the remaining 99% of people that either don't spend or spend too little to be considered good catches (hence the label "dolphin").

For example, Overwatch's loot boxes are worked in a way that you build up expectation as you watch the emblems fly up into the air and finally fall back after a delay, revealing the goodies you've been given by the almighty (most likely not-so-random) RNG. Could they have simply given you the items immediately in a list or pop-up window? Yes, but they probably realized that the unboxing system was better at keeping people paying, which is the only reason why they chose to have it work that way. At least Overwatch's gacha system is only linked to character customization, but when you're using gacha for gameplay-affecting rewards it gets even worse.

If the low credit acquisition rate in GoW4 is made to offset the lack of available rewards, that's the game's economy taking precedent over classical game design, and when game design becomes a secondary concern to developers before creating addicting revenue-generating systems, that's exactly the kind of thing I can't agree with.

Actually, I don't believe in the concept that IAPs are required because games cost too much, or that games actually need them... I mean, games are budgeted and must be greenlit before production even begins, and it'd be naive to think that game companies aren't considering IAP right then and there as a way to offset development costs. If a game costs $X to make and requires $Y from IAPs to get there, I'd rather have it cost $X-Y and not have skinner boxes in there that subvert the order of priorities from "have users enjoy the game" to "keep paying users captive through any means necessary to milk them as much and for as long as possible".

I'd also be pretty interested in seeing what'd happen if there was some kind of entity that was given the authority to look into games' RNG algorithms in order to ensure that the rules governing item distribution were actually fair... Actually, I wonder if that's actually a thing in physical gambling such as lotteries or casino games, as well as the possible implications that might come from having gacha mechanics being labeled as gambling, with all the legal, financial and social implications such a move might lead up to.

 

[EchoChamber]

It's a crime that I can't play with Benjamin carmine, he is my favorite character of the series

 

[shawnoftheshred]

I managed to clear 50 waves of horde on normal twice with the most basic bounties/skills (a Skill card that lowered the cost of barriers a little bit and a bounty that gave me XP for clearing waves 1-20), once with 4 players, once with 3 players. I think I've earned enough on all of those waves for one Elite pack - which is frustrating, as I'd like to have more things unlocked by now (customization/skills/I'm only level 4 engineer, etc). But also, I guess you only really need the better skill cards for Hardcore/Insane mode? The Horde mode packs seem priced okay, though.

 

[dab0ne]

But it's still random shit for real money. There's no choice or skill. It's fucking gambling, i have no idea how it's allowed.

The same way buying baseball cards isn't gambling. There's probably some loop hole in the law so kids can do it.

 

[mullet2000]

I'd really love to see gambling control boards get on board with looking at this stuff. There's a reason you have to be an adult to gamble, and the fact that stuff like this is in E and T rated games these days is kind of gross.

Even for the M rated games, a lot of countries have laws about payout odds that I'm sure games like Gears aren't following (because they have no reason to right now) and it'd be nice to see requirements around it. Whether or not I think the implementation is acceptable (Overwatch) or questionable (Gears 4), it IS gambling, there's no way around that. 95% of the time the player is just getting fluff that they don't want/aren't doing the gambling for, and we shouldn't sit here pretending that always getting x number of cards/items out of a box means that the player is "always winning" or something like that.

But, yeah, Gears is probably the worst/skeeviest implementation of a loot box system that I've yet seen. I like the base game a lot, but as a big Gears fan it's a bummer to see.

 

[RiccochetJ]

I'm fine with cosmetic stuff, but they went too far with Horde mode class cards.

 

[Chris1]

The same way buying baseball cards isn't gambling. There's probably some loop hole in the law so kids can do it.

The loophole is that it's not actually "gambling" as you are always winning. Everytime you buy a pack, you get something in return. There is technically no way to lose, even if whatever you get is pointless.

There's also that the items have no monetary value aswell which probably plays a part. But the fact you're always "winning" is the main one. It's kind of like the old hook a ducks, every turn wins a prize thing.

 

[SaintBrody]

Don't support games like this. This shit is ridiculous.

 

[Hjod]

That's exactly my gripe with gacha "game mechanics". Random is never random in the world of computing, and when you take a system that can tweak its odds at will without having to answer to anybody and add economists behavioral psychologists' know-how for conditioning people towards wanting to roll the dice "just one more time", then you've got a recipe for disaster.

The whole "just one more time" is what is so dangerous to people who are addicted, it doesn't matter what they can win, it's the thrill of the gambling that they get hooked on, my friend played on everything, even he would win it was small amounts of money, he just gambled because he was addicted to gambling. I don't think we have to wait that long before we see people become addicted to loot boxes, and I know that sounds silly as all hell, but it's a reality we will be faced with sooner or later.

Loot crates are just something I wish we could erradicate from "game design" (read: behavioral conditioning 101), but of course they're insanely more profitable than people paying a known amound of money to get exactly what they want. Why? Because people who are fixated on getting a particular item might end up rolling the dice over and over until they get it, and the microtransaction "designers" tweak the skinner box's values to make sure those so-called whales are milked for all they're worth, and help pay for the remaining 99% of people that either don't spend or spend too little to be considered good catches (hence the label "dolphin").

I understand why the do it, they want to maximize their profits and the whole system is geared towards making people buy multiple boxes. And I'm fine with them making money, it's that they make money of the backs of people that can't resist buying box after box I'm not fine with.

For example, Overwatch's loot boxes are worked in a way that you build up expectation as you watch the emblems fly up into the air and finally fall back after a delay, revealing the goodies you've been given by the almighty (most likely not-so-random) RNG. Could they have simply given you the items immediately in a list or pop-up window? Yes, but they probably realized that the unboxing system was better at keeping people paying, which is the only reason why they chose to have it work that way. At least Overwatch's gacha system is only linked to character customization, but when you're using gacha for gameplay-affecting rewards it gets even worse.


I'd also be pretty interested in seeing what'd happen if there was some kind of entity that was given the authority to look into games' RNG algorithms in order to ensure that the rules governing item distribution were actually fair... Actually, I wonder if that's actually a thing in physical gambling such as lotteries or casino games, as well as the possible implications that might come from having gacha mechanics being labeled as gambling, with all the legal, financial and social implications such a move might lead up to.

There are controls on regular gambling in casinos and such, and I guess there are checks in place to see that they follow the rules, I know you have to get a license to be able to run a Casino or anything that comes close to gambling.

And the more games goes the route of "loot boxes" the more we need some oversight, because it's only gonna get worse. And people will defend it, and in the end it's the people who are too weak to resist (addicts) that pays for it. But hey free DLC maps, fuck em.

 

[ElBoxyBrown]

So in Gears 3 the only way to unlock skins was to grind multiplayer and level up to unlock a handful of skins. If you wanted gun skins you had to pay out of pocket.

With Gears 4, they added in a ton of character and gun skins and made it so everything you do in multiplayer earns you points so you can roll a lottery and get some skins.

So people are mad about having the option of paying money for the lottery. What do people want? The Gears 3 system? No way to get gun skins unless you pay money? But you at least get what you paid for?

Make the grinding tolerable is what we're asking. They could make it like Halo 5 and Overwatch to where every time you level up you get a loot box for a chance to get a skin or anything. Right now, if your just play MP casually it'll take you weeks and months to just be able to afford even the most basic loot box.

 

[WadiumArcadium]

The game's great but it does piss me off. It's just too stingy. I have to save 3500 credits to buy an Elite pack and likely not get the character skin I want or scrap a ton of other cards. Either of those options takes too long.

 

[Facism]

Of course they do. They're corporations with investors to please. Do you think they made a $200 million dollar game for shits and giggles?

Source for this game costing 200 million?

 

[JulianImp]

I'd really love to see gambling control boards get on board with looking at this stuff. There's a reason you have to be an adult to gamble, and the fact that stuff like this is in E and T rated games these days is kind of gross.

Even for the M rated games, a lot of countries have laws about payout odds that I'm sure games like Gears aren't following (because they have no reason to right now) and it'd be nice to see requirements around it. Whether or not I think the implementation is acceptable (Overwatch) or questionable (Gears 4), it IS gambling, there's no way around that.

But, yeah, Gears is probably the worst/skeeviest implementation of a loot box system that I've yet seen. I like the base game a lot, but as a big Gears fan it's a bummer to see.

Oh, so they do exist. That's certainly something worth looking into for me.

Even if it doesn't get labeled as downright gambling (because yeah, Magic: The Gathering was only technically gambling when the rules and specific cards actually worked around ante, as in betting cards from the top of your deck for every game you play), I believe IAPs should show up in a game's rating information, at the very least. Enforcing payout odds and making sure that item distribution systems aren't being gamed by developers would also be interesting goals, but when the whole mobile ecosystem and now even PC/console games are being built around such game "mechanics", it might be really hard to get the industry to migrate to a more regulated system when it has become an integral part of so many games' economies, and thus their companies' financial stability.

 

[xRaizen]

The game's great but it does piss me off. It's just too stingy. I have to save 3500 credits to buy an Elite pack and likely not get the character skin I want or scrap a ton of other cards. Either of those options takes too long.

Not to mention duplicates

 

[ElBoxyBrown]

The game's great but it does piss me off. It's just too stingy. I have to save 3500 credits to buy an Elite pack and likely not get the character skin I want or scrap a ton of other cards. Either of those options takes too long.

I scrapped all of the cards from the free boxes I got just to afford the Day of the Dead skin for Kait. All I have left are the preorder and other special promo weapon and character skins.

 

[Papacheeks]

Source for this game costing 200 million?

330 People working on a game to get it out in two years? probably given lots of funds. Especially since you look at what they did for launch.

Marketing behind this was huge, especially with nvidia and rockstar energy to name a few.

That all adds up, also add in all the TV spots they've had in summer.

 

[DragonNC]

I can't really understand why you wasting money on random loot ?
that is worst gambling you can do...better go in Cassino you will have more chance.....

 

[mullet2000]

Oh, so they do exist. That's certainly something to look into.

Even if it doesn't get labeled as downright gambling (because yeah, Magic: The Gathering was only technically gambling when the rules and specific cards actually worked around ante, as in betting cards from the top of your deck for every game you play), I believe IAPs should show up in a game's rating information, at the very least. Enforcing payout odds and making sure that item distribution systems aren't being gamed by developers would also be interesting goals, but when the whole mobile ecosystem and now even PC/console games are being built around such game "mechanics", it might be really hard to get the industry to migrate to a more regulated system when it has become an integral part of so many games' economies, and thus their companies' financial stability.

On the contrary, the fact that it's so commonplace now is exactly why there needs to be some hard rules about things like payout odds and item distribution if you ask me. It'll take some doing to figure out some fair baseline rules, but it's important for consumer rights and in a lot of cases will just come down to editing some percentages on the developer end of things.

And yes, these things should absolutely be taken into account in a game's rating description. I'm surprised it still hasn't been, honestly.

 

[KiefbladeMaster]

Yeah, they're pretty bad. The patch made it a little better but it definitely needs more tweaking.

 

[Facism]

330 People working on a game to get it out in two years? probably given lots of funds. Especially since you look at what they did for launch.

Marketing behind this was huge, especially with nvidia and rockstar energy to name a few.

That all adds up, also add in all the TV spots they've had in summer.

That's great and all, but it's not what I asked for.

 

[JulianImp]

I can't really understand why you wasting money on random loot ?
that is worst gambling you can do...better go in Cassino you will have more chance.....

The thing is the people designing the random loot systems do understand it all too well... How to heckle people with gambling habits into buying as many boxes as they possibly can, that is.

Like I said before, random IAP systems are often designed by economists and behavioral psychologists. Supposedly, just around the 1% of users end up being "whales" (a casino term for compulsive big spenders... that we now apply in game design, sadly), so loot systems are basically crafted to make it so that the 1% of players get abused for their compulsive gambling or purchasing habits and that, in turn, ends up paying for part of the game's development.

If the price for "free" DLC is preying upon people with compulsions, then I'd better not have us go there at all. Of course regulating payouts and all that wouldn't negate the fact that the industry would continue to do that, but the alternative of banning such practices outright is little more than an unenforceable utopia, so at least I'd be happy with a middle ground where there's at least some kind of arbiter to make sure game companies aren't the ones gaming the system.

 

[Dubz]

He only way this stops is if a powerful politicians kid unloads a ton of cash for these gambling boxes. As soon as the politician gets the bill in the mail, all hell breaks loose and we start calling it what it is....illegal gambling.

 

[bede-x]

We deserve it. Look at people on this board defend these in every possible way. The market can't stop buying them. It's a lost battle already.

And the worst is when people talking about unlocks being slow, which is not the problem. The problem is that microtransactions are there at all.

They create noise making you see a commercial before you can even enter the game, have the title screen highlight the store option and introduces the same gambling card packs, level system, crafting and other crap many games are known for. That's not what Gears should be.

As a final insult they also need to keep track of what cards you own, making Horde an online only mode that will disappear when they turn off the servers. As if adding pay to win elements to it wasn't enough

 

[Ricky_R]

I don't play online anymore, but I have no issues with microtransactions as long as they don't trick people into buying stuff or put players not willing to buy stuff in disadvantage.

Everything else, if people are willing to pay, then why not?

 

[J_Viper]

The problem is that earning credits in-game takes way too fucking long, especially in Horde.

They need to fix that ASAP.

 

[m23]

330 People working on a game to get it out in two years? probably given lots of funds. Especially since you look at what they did for launch.

Marketing behind this was huge, especially with nvidia and rockstar energy to name a few.

That all adds up, also add in all the TV spots they've had in summer.

So that equals $200 million? I know you didn't say the number, but it seems like the number was pulled out of thin air.

 

[JulianImp]

I don't play online anymore, but I have no issues with microtransactions as long as they don't trick people into buying stuff or put players not willing to buy stuff in disadvantage.

Everything else, if people are willing to pay, then why not?

Sorry if I come across as being overly reiterative, but the bolded is exactly what's going on here.

People paying for a $500 in-game monocle is one thing (in that case, it's more of a kitsch sign of status and power, same as with people who buy luxury goods IRL), but things begin getting scary when you're gambling with an undisclosed pseudorandom loot generator that is known to be built from the ground up to abuse people with compulsive gambling habits.

 

[Moofers]

For all the "just don't spend money on any packs, problem solved!" people, there's another level to this with Horde that you're not looking at.

Dedicated players can play the game only so long while that carrot of progression is dangled in front of them. Eventually, players are going to want to feel like they are actually leveling up skills and classes without having to dump a ridiculous amount of time into it or fork over money. Less devoted players who are maybe new to Horde or curious might find the mode fun, but then see that giant climb of progression and just say screw it. We've already seen people in this thread talk about how they were going to buy the game but now are re-thinking it. I think there is a real danger of having players either pass on the game altogether, or just abandon it due to the slow progression of earning the packs.

So what happens then? They leave and the really dedicated players have fewer people to find Horde matches with. So eventually, we'll be dealing with the consequences of The Coalition's inability to retain newer or more casual players. Games like Overwatch enjoy a large base of really varied players in terms of both skill and time to play. Gears will price itself right out of the running for some people and that's why I'm afraid of not seeing a healthy player base in a few months.

 

[Shpeshal Nick]

Why is this akin to gambling and not to say....trading cards?

Or are trading cards considered a form of gambling also?

Serious question.

 

[krang]

Why is this akin to gambling and not to say....trading cards?

Or are trading cards considered a form of gambling also?

Serious question.

With trading cards, you're...well...trading the cards. Gambling assumes that the cards, dice, or whatever, is the mechanism to determine who wins money based on a stake.

I'd say this is far more like trading cards than gambling, since there is no cash payout.

 

[Danis Saur]

I had no idea this was a problem for people, I can get the pack that is 3,500 credits in like 2-3 hours, which is a normal playtime for me.

But most of all, cosmetics aren't important to me, but are fun to see. I wasn't aching for my Lancer to look sky blue with white hearts, but I got it and I like it alot.

I don't think its a problem, even the Horde mode packs that help only help a little and aren't over-powering.

 

[Shpeshal Nick]

With trading cards, you're...well...trading the cards. Gambling assumes that the cards, dice, or whatever, is the mechanism to determine who wins money based on a stake.

I'd say this is far more like trading cards than gambling, since there is no cash payout.

Well this is what I assumed. You're paying real or fake money for cards. Cards that are in packs and yand u don't know what you're buying. Just like trading cards in real life.

So not sure why the gambling comparison is being made.

 

[blakep267]

Well this is what I assumed. You're paying real or fake money for cards. Cards that are in packs and yand u don't know what you're buying. Just like trading cards in real life.

So not sure why the gambling comparison is being made.

It's not gambling. Gambling would be you paying real money for the chance at getting anything. You always get something here. Whether you like it or not isn't grounds to say it's gambling

 

[Wedzi]

I don't play online anymore, but I have no issues with microtransactions as long as they don't trick people into buying stuff or put players not willing to buy stuff in disadvantage.

Everything else, if people are willing to pay, then why not?

I generally agree with this sentiment but if you're going to dangle a carrot in front of me I should be able to reach it at a reasonable rate. If not then that's just bad game design.

 

[CapitalismSucks DonkeyBalls]

Why not just add loot drops to MP matches and Horde mode after every 10 waves (Harcore/Insane only)? Work on creating more skins or additives to keep players playing and keep them happy.

Don't ask me to pay $100 bucks for 25 cases of cosmetics.

 

[krang]

Well this is what I assumed. You're paying real or fake money for cards. Cards that are in packs and yand u don't know what you're buying. Just like trading cards in real life.

So not sure why the gambling comparison is being made.

I think we both know the answer to that.