https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-01-18-nhs-mental-health-boss-says-loot-boxes-are-setting-kids-up-for-addiction-to-gambling

 

“ The NHS' mental health boss has said loot boxes are "setting kids up for addiction by teaching them to gamble".

 

In a strongly-worded statement, NHS mental health director Claire Murdoch called for a crackdown on gambling addiction risks - and that would involve video game companies banning loot boxes from games children play.

 

Snip

 

Kerry Hopkins from Electronic Arts stepped in to say: "we don't call them loot boxes - we call them surprise mechanics."

(Now we know where Ben Irving was getting his instructions from)

 

You got to love the picture of the “ A virtual slot machine mini-game in NBA 2K20”

 

Kind of reminds me of the slot machine mechanics in the Amplifier system (but without the visual bling).

You need to make kids get addicted to gambling, so that they will bet on football (soccer) games in the future, so that the Premier League et al can get a lot of sponsoring money from betting companies.

This game's lootboxes are called cartel packs. Personally I'm convinced that SWTOR switched over too the current set up with many direct sales and one type of cartel pack because of the changing landscape.

 

Amplifiers are in game with an in game currency but it still is glorified gambling. The issue I see is also the enormous amounts of credits that are suddenly being taken out of the economy that people will more quickly supplement their credit flow by buying credits. You could try to do this buy selling CM stuff on the GTN but I find that nowadays the prices you can ask are getting lower because more people are doing it, ergo supply is increasing.

 

This will have a counter-effect because it means that you cannot keep up as easily with the credit sinks and then it will mean that it becomes really expensive to do it the "legal" way. So credit sellers may benefit from this more and more.

 

The credit costs of gearing and crafting have increased a LOT in 6.0. And it's starting to take the fun out of the game for me. My characters are now geared except augments on a few so that leaves me either with little to do or make new characters that'll cost 10s of millions to deck out again. The issue there is that gearing is really fast once you get to your first set of 306 gear but that speed also means you need a lot of credits more quickly.

 

Some make money with crafting others with selling CM stuff. However, crafting margins are under pressure and if more people use this the margins will fall. CM stuff is already starting to fall because it's something that more people try to do to supplement their in-game cash flow. I mean Master's Datacrons are now sitting around 50M and not too long ago this was 10s of millions more. And then realise the cost of 2000 CC and what 50M buys you in game.

 

Amplifiers are the worst of the in-game credit sinks however and they need to stop with that. It's not loot boxes but it's something that I find the most distasteful part of 6.0, next to the tremendous crafting costs. I think that whenever we get the next gear tier into the game, this will hit a fair number of people hard when they realise they have to get their amplifiers all over again. I already know that if they don't fix amplifiers before adding new tiers of gear that I will stop playing until they do fix it. This first round was horrible enough, I'm not dealing with that **** another round.

It's sad that legislation may ultimately be what's needed to defeat loot boxes and the extreme monetization of this industry. Such practices, which only became mainstream in the previous decade, have greatly diminished the quality of what would otherwise be excellent games.

 

Even shifting the design into RNG gameplay mechanics, as has been done in SWTOR with amplifiers, loot crates, spoils of war vendors, and so on. Nothing about it is fun. The old ways were best. Classic MMO gameplay was superb.

 

The only reason the CM is tolerable is because SWTOR is F2P, and assumably, because it expands the selection of armor, weapons, mounts, etc. that wouldn't be available otherwise. 95% of it is still incredibly overpriced though, especially considering the visual errors/glitches associated with weapons and armor pieces in animations.

 

Lack of sales should have fixed that, but no, there are players who actually spend $40 in real life money for a pair of blasters, $20 for an armor set that looks great when your character is stationary, yet bugs like crazy during cutscenes and animations. Incredible. Even the only skirt model in the game that bares leg skin, Naga Sadow's Lower Robes, glitches so that your character's thighs clip through it while walking or running, killing immersion(especially in cutscenes).

Edited January 19, 2020 by Drenovade

I wish they would start applying that philosophy to the toy industry. Toys marketed to children have become increasingly focused on "blind packs" which are really no different than loot boxes. But with IRL loot boxes, not only are children being introduced to gambling, they are also learning to shop lift. Not a day goes by that my store doesn't loose several of those to little sticky fingers. If they don't steal them out right, they damage the packaging to see what is in them, which, for us is exactly the same since the toy has to be tossed out.

I never bought a single loot box.

 

I am happy that they bring stuff like new outfits directly to the shop.

These companies need to be hit hard i'm 100% against loot boxes I have purchased in the past and got burnt hard so I am very against the use of these or any surprise mechanics in games but it's gambling and they can't deny it.

it's gambling and they can't deny it.

 

They do though. That's the issue, alongside it being part of the business model to sustain games longer term.

 

Personally I'd prefer to see the return of paid expansions instead of the gambling boxes, guess which one makes the game companies more money? As to the whole premise of the game companies defence saying that there is no monetary value, I call BS on that as people sell their accounts. Regardless of the Terms of service companies try to hide behind, they simply can't control the end user variables.

 

As for the issue with amplifiers mentioned above, it's called conditioning. Which is why i'll likely move on when the next tier of gear is released, there are other developers who get it and don't do it to the players, BioWare is failing miserably in that regard. They're not protecting the end user from harmful practices and I find that particular behaviour abhorrent from a development studio.

This game's lootboxes are called cartel packs. Personally I'm convinced that SWTOR switched over too the current set up with many direct sales and one type of cartel pack because of the changing landscape.

 

Amplifiers are in game with an in game currency but it still is glorified gambling. The issue I see is also the enormous amounts of credits that are suddenly being taken out of the economy that people will more quickly supplement their credit flow by buying credits. You could try to do this buy selling CM stuff on the GTN but I find that nowadays the prices you can ask are getting lower because more people are doing it, ergo supply is increasing.

 

This will have a counter-effect because it means that you cannot keep up as easily with the credit sinks and then it will mean that it becomes really expensive to do it the "legal" way. So credit sellers may benefit from this more and more.

 

The credit costs of gearing and crafting have increased a LOT in 6.0. And it's starting to take the fun out of the game for me. My characters are now geared except augments on a few so that leaves me either with little to do or make new characters that'll cost 10s of millions to deck out again. The issue there is that gearing is really fast once you get to your first set of 306 gear but that speed also means you need a lot of credits more quickly.

 

Some make money with crafting others with selling CM stuff. However, crafting margins are under pressure and if more people use this the margins will fall. CM stuff is already starting to fall because it's something that more people try to do to supplement their in-game cash flow. I mean Master's Datacrons are now sitting around 50M and not too long ago this was 10s of millions more. And then realise the cost of 2000 CC and what 50M buys you in game.

 

Amplifiers are the worst of the in-game credit sinks however and they need to stop with that. It's not loot boxes but it's something that I find the most distasteful part of 6.0, next to the tremendous crafting costs. I think that whenever we get the next gear tier into the game, this will hit a fair number of people hard when they realise they have to get their amplifiers all over again. I already know that if they don't fix amplifiers before adding new tiers of gear that I will stop playing until they do fix it. This first round was horrible enough, I'm not dealing with that **** another round.

 

Exactly my thoughts and conclusions since 6.0 was on the pts.

 

The system is just a poorly disguised slot machine. I pointed this out on the pts too and offered up some solutions to make it less so. I was not the only one who offered solutions, but Bioware have not listened and we have Amp gambling now, plus we have RNG vendors, which are also proper gambling.

 

The “free loot boxes” from completing content or RNG drops are either rigged on purpose to not work or are broken because the gear bug still isn’t fixed and Bioware refuse to discuss it more since their post in November.

They asked for feed back. We gave it for 5 weeks. We asked if they need more or do they have enough to fix it?? And we get complete silence. It’s now been 2 months and it’s not fixed and we have no clue if it ever will be.

 

Which makes me think that it was purposely set up this way as a stealth grind behind the grind to slow people down even more by constantly giving them the wrong gear drops each week. So instead of fixing it once we proved it wasn’t working as they said it should, they went quiet to milk it for as long as possible.

 

Add the over the top and bad credit sinks (some with gambling mechanics) and it’s feel like your are partly trapped in a casino and as usual, the odds are stacked in the houses favour.

 

This whole patch (it’s not big enough to be called an expansion IMO) is one big gambling mechanic. It’s a semi, non-monetises gaming casino designed to get you used to “surprise mechanics” and to become desensitised to them. It feels like swtor has been setup as a testing ground to see how to port the same system to Anthem and find out if they can get people to flip CM stuff more to keep up with the bad credit sinks.

 

Part of me thinks this was by the direction of the EA masters to test and push new types of addictive setups to future disguise new ways to re-monetise their games that have come under pressure for having “surprise mechanics” that focus on P2W, which I know swtor isn’t.

But the more they put these gambling mechanics in ALL games, the more desensitised players become and if they can find a loop hole to get players to buy more from cash stores direct, they can say it’s not gambling with money.

 

To sum up, EAware have made swtor more based on RNG and gambling mechanics than at anytime in its history. They refuse to give the odds on “winning” what you are after and they stack it against you or when you prove it’s broken, they won’t fix it,

The credit sellers are prolific (because it suits their model). They buy stuff from the market to flip for credits which they sell players. The Whales buy more cartel items to flip and so do normal players to keep up with the credit sinks and gambling.

It’s the normal players that try to do the right thing (not buy credits from sellers) that can get sucked into this money trap and it’s all because of gambling mechanics and credit sinks in the game. You know, the “free ones” that allow them to say it’s not gambling because people are not paying money.

 

I think it’s good if the regulators from around the world start regulating the paid loot box system and make companies disclose the odds. But that doesn’t go far enough. They should have to disclose the odds for any type of free gambling mechanics too, that includes any RNG, crafting crits, free Loot boxes and any Amplifier type slot machine mechanics.

 

The game companies are already two steps ahead of the politics and future regulation. They know regulation is coming, so they are changing their own gambling models to circumvent them or disguise them in plain sight.

 

People may say I’m making up a conspiracy, but I was right on the pts about the credit sinks, the credit sellers, the Amplifier slot machines and everyone else saw what was coming with the crafting system.

You just have to join the small dots and read enough of what’s going on (in the gaming world) to see where All this headed in the long term for gaming (especially EA).

It's sad that legislation may ultimately be what's needed to defeat loot boxes and the extreme monetization of this industry. Such practices, which only became mainstream in the previous decade, have greatly diminished the quality of what would otherwise be excellent games.

 

Even shifting the design into RNG gameplay mechanics, as has been done in SWTOR with amplifiers, loot crates, spoils of war vendors, and so on. Nothing about it is fun. The old ways were best. Classic MMO gameplay was superb.

 

The only reason the CM is tolerable is because SWTOR is F2P, and assumably, because it expands the selection of armor, weapons, mounts, etc. that wouldn't be available otherwise. 95% of it is still incredibly overpriced though, especially considering the visual errors/glitches associated with weapons and armor pieces in animations.

 

Lack of sales should have fixed that, but no, there are players who actually spend $40 in real life money for a pair of blasters, $20 for an armor set that looks great when your character is stationary, yet bugs like crazy during cutscenes and animations. Incredible. Even the only skirt model in the game that bares leg skin, Naga Sadow's Lower Robes, glitches so that your character's thighs clip through it while walking or running, killing immersion(especially in cutscenes).

 

100% this.

 

And I would like to add, there are a lot more of their cartel market items that glitch or have bleed through colours or clipping problems because they aren’t optimised for all body types for both male and female. None of these ever get fixed, but people still pay $20 - $40 for pixels that are broken.

 

What really astounds me is the HK chapter that’s been added to the CM for $40. It’s one chapter of 3 year old content and possibly companions “if” you make the right choices when playing.

(Let’s remove the argument on wether they should or should not have made available an old subscriber exclusive, that’s not the point of this example and I don’t want people derailing the thread arguing about it).

 

As a comparison, the game when launched only cost $60. THATS A WHOLE GAME!! (Not one lousy chapter) a game that has 8 story arcs, with 5 companions for each story and you are guaranteed to get 5 companions per story. Plus side story quests, pvp, flash points and eventually got operations. ALL of that for $60.

 

The prices on the CM are totally ridiculous when you compare what the game cost and what our continued subs don’t deliver. $5 for a dye you can only use once?? Common, please, they shouldn’t even be on the cartel market, they should only ever have been a crafting item.

 

How about the other cartel market companions that can’t even craft “if” you pay the $15 for them (I think that’s the conversion for $AUD). There isn’t even any documented info to say they can’t craft. So unsuspecting people buy them to use as crafters and find out they can’t do it. But will Bioware give you a refund? Of course not. They have your money now and you won’t get it back even if they mislead you.

 

While ever people pay the prices on the CM, they have no reason to reduce them. And if they were really serious about keeping prices and inflation under control on the GTN, they would list and offer up 100% of the CM catalogue and not only parts of it they rotate to get people to buy a bunch of those items when ever they get listed. That way they can keep demand high and supply low and keep generating more CM sales. (It’s a retail model IRL I’ve been involved with in the past, so it sticks out like a sore thumb to me).

 

Sadly, they don’t get that they could probably make more money by significantly reduce the cost of items like dyes and other consumables like renames, etc. and would probable sell more other items if they reduced the total. Costs by 20%-40% across the board.

 

But the high CM pricing now feeds into their credit sink + gambling model and has gone full circle because more whales, credit sellers and normal players are paying to flip in game to either sell credits direct or to support their credit supply to keep up with the credit sinks. It’s really an igneous design to circumvent any P2W and gambling stigma.

I wish they would start applying that philosophy to the toy industry. Toys marketed to children have become increasingly focused on "blind packs" which are really no different than loot boxes. But with IRL loot boxes, not only are children being introduced to gambling, they are also learning to shop lift. Not a day goes by that my store doesn't loose several of those to little sticky fingers. If they don't steal them out right, they damage the packaging to see what is in them, which, for us is exactly the same since the toy has to be tossed out.

 

I feel like the main difference between a Loot Box in a video game, and a blind pack of toys or cards or whatever.. is that the blind pack still offers you something tangible, something you can feel and touch. A loot box is just code, 1's and 0's and nothing else, and when that game closes down, it's gone.

 

Don't get me wrong, Loot Boxes are god awful and should burn. But I do see a difference. I would say something like Magic the Gathering, or pokemon booster packs are the same. You might get a good card, but you will usually get crap. But you still have the cards.

Sadly, they don’t get that they could probably make more money by significantly reduce the cost of items like dyes and other consumables like renames, etc. and would probable sell more other items if they reduced the total. Costs by 20%-40% across the board.

 

Honestly for the pricing they've gone with for "sale promotions" if they went further (say a 75% reduction) across the board would probably net them more than a 60% increase in sales. It's already been noted with things like Steam sales that reducing the cost to something reasonable can increase sales.

 

The BioWare model of sales is flawed, they could rotate different categories weekly or fortnightly and make far more money if they lowered the pricing properly.

 

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/174587/Steam_sales_How_deep_discounts_really_affect_your_games.php

 

Even when something is "discounted" I tend to ignore it because the pricing model is simply wrong. I rarely touch the CM stuff now aside from when I was redecorating my stronghold. I'd buy more if the pricing was in the right range, it currently isn't.

Honestly for the pricing they've gone with for "sale promotions" if they went further (say a 75% reduction) across the board would probably net them more than a 60% increase in sales. It's already been noted with things like Steam sales that reducing the cost to something reasonable can increase sales.

 

The BioWare model of sales is flawed, they could rotate different categories weekly or fortnightly and make far more money if they lowered the pricing properly.

 

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/174587/Steam_sales_How_deep_discounts_really_affect_your_games.php

 

Even when something is "discounted" I tend to ignore it because the pricing model is simply wrong. I rarely touch the CM stuff now aside from when I was redecorating my stronghold. I'd buy more if the pricing was in the right range, it currently isn't.

It's not quite as simple as that. I'll give a quick example.

 

Let's say the price of something is 10 bucks (dollars/euros/whatever). And at that price they sell 100 of them a month. Then the revenue it generates is 1000 bucks a month.

Now let's say that they lowered the price to 5 bucks each. Now instead of a 100, they sell 150 a month. Then the revenue it generates is 750 bucks a month. That's 25% less revenue.

 

It could of course be that for example at 8 bucks each they sell 140. Then they would make 1120 bucks a month. So that would be the sweet spot for them if going lower gains less revenue as well as raising the price.

 

For a discount to work, the amount by which it's discounted should be made up by number of sales. So if they lowered it from 10 to 5 bucks they would need to sell 200 instead of 100 to break even.

 

Now that's not the entire story because of course when stuff is generally cheaper it may lead to increased spending overall. Key word is "may". It may not. And so people really need to stop thinking in terms of "I would spend more" and then acting like that represents the player base. Some people will spend more but will enough people spend more to make up for the revenue loss caused by the lower price?

 

Saying that their model is flawed is saying that in the example they will automatically increase total revenue. You don't know this. It may not and I think that sales are one way of increasing spending (because people well check the CM more often) and also helps to test to see what certain prices will do in units sold.

 

But people who think they know that the CM is a failed model should realise that it kept the TORtanic from sinking for 8 years now and the game making more revenue than GW2 for example. So clearly the facts show that it is working well for them. So well that Eric even came here talking about the 10 year anniversary (and beyond). That's very unlike BW to do that.

 

So with all due respect but the people who say that their CM model failed and that their proof is that because they would spend more everybody would, really aren't thinking clearly. The facts are against them. If anyhting it's worked too well.

 

This game suffers because they took all the rewards out of the game and put them in the CM. Only gear is left and they give that away for doing the easiest content. And then they slapped an RNG system on it to give it the appearance of challenge. But any idiot with a keyboard can do this. It's not a challenge, but a matter of luck. Achievements for doing RNG stuff is the worst of it all. Like how you unlock bonus sets only if you get them through RNG and not when you buy them from the vendor.

 

This is the sort of stuff that also normalizes gambling and takes out any need for learning to get better at something...which is actually something that can keep you busy. But that harder content is not rewarded properly. So in this game you essentially get gear through RNG and the rest of the rewards you have to buy from the CM or from someone else who bought it from the CM. The whole game is about RNG and credits. And because they are sucking credits out by making gearing a lot more expensive but have not added better ways to gain credits, a lot of players are going to be looking at the CM first to make credits and now that supply is increasing and you can ask fewer credits for CM items, people will be looking at credit seller options because their deals are suddenly a lot better now.

 

It seems to me that 6.0 is a test case for them on how to monetize once they can't sell loot boxes anymore and from my point of view that's why they put the RNG in the game rather than in the CM (there still are lootboxes of course but most is direct sales) and by doing so they want to use this to increase CM sales. That's my view on it. So effectively they detached the RNG/gambling bit from the CM for the most part and put it into the game in a way that it can increase CM sales. My gut feeling says that EA is using SWTOR as a testing ground for new ways to exploit players in different ways so they are ready to milk players in different ways when laws do change. Tin foil hat stuff? I'm not so sure.

I believe Amplifiers are worse than crates. They feel like one shot scratch cards and can quickly rack up large costs. A truely horrible addition to the game. Easily one of the largest credit sinks to be added to the game.

Viva Los Vegas !!!

 

(Elvis would be proud)

I believe Amplifiers are worse than crates. They feel like one shot scratch cards and can quickly rack up large costs. A truely horrible addition to the game. Easily one of the largest credit sinks to be added to the game.

 

They are terrible, but they're not loot boxes by a long shot. In fact, if CM boxes were acquirable in game (realistically), they would not be gambling either. Also, the fact that SWTOR uses exclusively cosmetic items in its loot boxes actually makes it positive compared to many games. They are only needed if you want to get a shiny item, not if you want to play.

 

It's important for players to accept their own responsibility where due. Poor impulse control is no excuse for spending thousands of dollars on the chance of getting something shiny. The OP even confuses the issue further by going on to criticize the price of direct-for-sale items. So which is it?

 

Two things makes the practice of loot boxes predatory: when they are directed at children who are not of legal age to make their own decisions on important life matters, when they alter or hide the chances of specific items. For example, how rare is gold, how rare is platinum, and do all platinum items have the same rarity or are values deceptively tweaked even further for items of the same rarity?

 

Even the fact that there are no longer any bronze armor sets produced is disturbing, however it's important to note that at least now we get complete sets instead of the chance of a chance of getting Satele Shan boots, etc.

 

Does SWTOR push child gamers to become addicted to gambling? It's hard to say, because I'm fairly sure that (a) credit cards or payment methods are not automatically enabled, (b) adding a credit card/payment method requires authentication, © adult parents of underage children receive regular credit card statements of all purchases made on the account. Let's not pretend that parents don't have a responsibility to monitor their children's paying and playing habits.

 

Warframe is 100% free to play, and offers many direct-for-purchase items. They also require you to purchase currency to buy important items needed for gameplay. However, you can grind these items and get the money needed to buy what you want. So... if children end up playing 18 hours a day so they can sell more and get more... is that Warframe's fault? The newest items (Prime, gold shiny and with better stats) are directly available (with exclusives) at exhorbitant $50-$100 price tags. Is that predatory?

 

Don't get me wrong, some loot boxes are very predatory, but SWTOR seems to have put a lot of systems in place to allow direct purchases of the items in varying ways. The change I would like to see is a disclosure of odds for all items. Other than that, people have a responsibility to decide what value they place on anything and whether or not to purchase it (and children have parents to teach them this lesson).

The one place the comparison to slot machine breaks down is that with a slot machine, they are designed to hit a jackpot, at some point. There are regulations in place to ensure that it *does* happen; it's just extremely rare.

 

If what SWTOR has now is a *true* RNG, then it's possible, however remote, to *never* get what you want. With a slot machine, the desired outcome is predictable (a jackpot). With, for example, amplifiers, the game doesn't know what you want. There is no expected outcome. True, the more you try, the more the likelihood of getting what you want; but each try has the same chances of giving what you are looking for. (Which is vastly smaller than the chance of something you don't.) A true RNG means that you could get the same result five times in a row.

 

(On a somewhat related note: iTunes had to add programming into their "random" algorithm to make it feel more random. They had to make it less random than it was because in a true random pick, it is possible to play the same song twice in a row, or play the next song in an album. With that, listeners felt like it was *not* being random, so Apple had to program around this.)

I believe Amplifiers are worse than crates. They feel like one shot scratch cards and can quickly rack up large costs. A truely horrible addition to the game. Easily one of the largest credit sinks to be added to the game.

 

I call them slot machines. Pull the handle each time to see what couple of results come up.

 

The one place the comparison to slot machine breaks down is that with a slot machine, they are designed to hit a jackpot, at some point. There are regulations in place to ensure that it *does* happen; it's just extremely rare.

 

That is a good point. But not all slot machines (at least in Australia) build to a jackpot. You can keep putting coins in and never hit a jackpot. You might get small wins or even a bigger payout, but it’s all based on odds. Which is all RNG is.

You have x amount of possible results and each spin can be the same or different. That is exactly what happens with the amplifiers.

Edited January 21, 2020 by TrixxieTriss

Here is the full release from the NHS (UK government national health service)

 

https://www.england.nhs.uk/2020/01/countrys-top-mental-health-nurse-warns-video-games-pushing-young-people-into-under-the-radar-gambling/

 

The writing is on the wall and it won’t be long till gaming companies are forced to change some practices or actually loose access to big markets (like theyve already started to happen in China). You can argue that not many western game companies care about China (which I think is not true), but that is another discussion.

 

I think Western game companies will start to come under more regulatory pressures if they don’t change there ways.

Here is the full release from the NHS (UK government national health service)

 

https://www.england.nhs.uk/2020/01/countrys-top-mental-health-nurse-warns-video-games-pushing-young-people-into-under-the-radar-gambling/

 

The writing is on the wall and it won’t be long till gaming companies are forced to change some practices or actually loose access to big markets (like theyve already started to happen in China). You can argue that not many western game companies care about China (which I think is not true), but that is another discussion.

 

I think Western game companies will start to come under more regulatory pressures if they don’t change there ways.

I also believe the writing is on the wall and the likes of EA are seeing this also. That's why I suspect they are doing things with games already to be ready for that moment, SWTOR being a prime example.

 

As mentioned above, I believe it's why they moved their lootbox RNG systems into the game and added massive credit sinks to drive direct sales. Can't prove it but that's what it feels like to me.

 

In the end they want people in an addictive cycle and if they can't do it in the CM anymore they'll do it in the game because people who play more buy more. And so the daily sales also make people look at the CM more often, which are sales opportunities. And the lack of credits will drive people to buying stuff to sell on the GTN.

 

The gearing system in this game has sucked since 5.0 and it's because they brought their lootbox system into the gameplay with Galactic Command aka Renown and now fully deployed it into RNG loot tables effectively making bosses loot boxes. Skill is not required, anyone gets to open the loot boxes (or shall I call them loot bosses) because everybody gets to loot.

 

But you do need a sub to get these loot boxes...so you still pay for these loot boxes.

 

Just think about it. Some people were cheering for the democratization of loot in 5.0 and the added ease of 6.0. But it effectively made this game the template for EA on how to milk players when the cash loot boxes as we know them are banned or put in a mature rating.

 

I really hope the NHS recommendation to not just take on loot boxes but also the gambling actions in gameplay or this will be the shape of things. EA and others aren't going to accept making less money and they will find other ways to make the same profits in whatever nefarious way that hasn't been specifically forbidden by law.

 

That's what I believe.

I really hope the NHS recommendation to not just take on loot boxes but also the gambling actions in gameplay or this will be the shape of things. EA and others aren't going to accept making less money and they will find other ways to make the same profits in whatever nefarious way that hasn't been specifically forbidden by law.

 

That's what I believe.

 

There's an easy way to make lots of profit.

Sell a high quality product that lots of your customers want and enjoy.

 

Problem is to do that you have to ACTUALLY LISTEN to what the customer wants to buy and deliver that product.

 

And Bioware has always failed at that; and has instead delivered a product the Lead Producer wants to play.

 

All The Best

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-01-18-nhs-mental-health-boss-says-loot-boxes-are-setting-kids-up-for-addiction-to-gambling

 

“ The NHS' mental health boss has said loot boxes are "setting kids up for addiction by teaching them to gamble".

 

In a strongly-worded statement, NHS mental health director Claire Murdoch called for a crackdown on gambling addiction risks - and that would involve video game companies banning loot boxes from games children play.

 

Snip

 

Kerry Hopkins from Electronic Arts stepped in to say: "we don't call them loot boxes - we call them surprise mechanics."

(Now we know where Ben Irving was getting his instructions from)

 

You got to love the picture of the “ A virtual slot machine mini-game in NBA 2K20”

 

Kind of reminds me of the slot machine mechanics in the Amplifier system (but without the visual bling).

 

Pathetic isn't it...

 

I remember when the loot boxes were first introduced in this game and gambling was the first thing that came to my mind. It was already in the game through the Cartel Market, but at least that was a choice. Then along came more loot boxes and it was being thrown right into our face with no choice, other than to unsub. I even posted about it on these very forums on a few occasions.

 

Gambling, drugs, alcohol, nicotine, sugar and now 'screen time' are the most common addictions in the world, and EAWare is now pushing one of them to its customer base and it was only amplified with the release of Onslaught. Pun! The very process of the Amplified system is feeding a gambler's addiction. Those buildings in Vegas, Atlantic City and many others didn't get that way by luck.

 

The snippet from Kerry Hopkins is about as pathetic as it gets. I'll believe a change happens, when I see it. It's about making money, and it's going to be hard to change. Legalized racketeering always comes to mind on topics such as these.

 

There's an easy way to make lots of profit.

Sell a high quality product that lots of your customers want and enjoy.

 

Problem is to do that you have to ACTUALLY LISTEN to what the customer wants to buy and deliver that product.

 

And Bioware has always failed at that; and has instead delivered a product the Lead Producer wants to play.

 

All The Best

The problem is that they don't want to make lots of money but they want to make all of the money.

 

For a quality product you need developers and writers of quality and pay them and give them proper direction. They don't see that as easy or worth it because as we see most gamers are willing to eat bs as long as EA, Activision, Bethesda and the likes are putting it out. So that's the easy way for them.

 

As someone once said, the greatest marketing tool is the customer's ability to accept bs.

 

The current situation is just not fun for me anymore so I just unsubbed. Maybe 7.0 will be better. I'll log in this evening and then say my goodbyes. I'll be happy to come back when the situation improves, but currently there's nothing that keeps me playing and the current reward system in 6.0 is a big part of it. It's what made me take a break for a year and a half in 5.0 and it looks like 6.0 is going to be the same deal.

 

I probably should consider myself one of these players now that only comes back every expansion, plays it through in a couple of months and leaves again. Maybe that's ok but I find it kinda sad myself cause I would like to stay in between as well but the game has lost any aspiration of being aspirational. Yeah it sounds like a joke but it actually isn't.

EA and others aren't going to accept making less money and they will find other ways to make the same profits in whatever nefarious way that hasn't been specifically forbidden by law.

 

That's what I believe.

 

You're spot on with this. All the "we love children, we love the world, kumbaya" messaging is nothing more than PR with many companies. Profits are the end all, be all of decisions made. Legal loopholes are treasures to be exploited, whether people/children get hurt or not (unless it hurts the corporate image in a way that causes profits to be impacted).

 

This is really the underlying problem, not just with gaming companies, but with the entire corporate structure. Greed at all costs is rewarded instead of punished, and short term benefits vs. long-term effects are prioritized. Even many drug manufacturers have performed "acceptable loss" research into the potential profits to be gotten from a drug vs. the amount of people who will develop life-threatening conditions and sue the company. In other words, many (not all) modern corporations view humans as little more than numbers on their P&Ls.

 

It's pretty sickening. Unfortunately, there's not me individual gamers can actually do other than refusing to participate (and even that will have a negligible impact unless many other spending gamers feel the same way). The funny thing is that people are so easily swayed by loot box mechanics that if the person complaining suddenly gets a rare drop, it's like all is forgiven, and all the social outrage disappears, even though nothing has changed. In other words, many players are ONLY outraged when they lose, not honestly by what happens to others.

There's an easy way to make lots of profit.

Sell a high quality product that lots of your customers want and enjoy.

 

Problem is to do that you have to ACTUALLY LISTEN to what the customer wants to buy and deliver that product.

 

And Bioware has always failed at that; and has instead delivered a product the Lead Producer wants to play.

 

All The Best

 

I do love your posts. Succinct as always.