[completely off topic, it's just occurred to me that if spent as much time writing my book as I do writing on these forums I'd have written a series by now ]

I managed several novels worth - 100+ chapters at around 6-8K words per chapter, as well as having family life, and a full time job and playing SWTOR. - Just a matter of slicing your time up into manageable chunks is all it takes.

maybe if we'd all spent less time opening boxes over and over and over in the hope of better gear, shiny things and more boxes to open....

“If it feels like gambling, then it probably is”

IMO, this is the premise the legislation should work off.

It shouldn’t matter if it’s loot boxes or something like Amplifier reroll mechanics.

It shouldn’t matter if it’s paid cash gambling or just mechanics because unpaid gambling mechanics are a gate way to normalising gambling behaviours and addictions.

The way I see it is the gaming industry can mitigate this behaviour by educating the players by giving them the odds (like the gambling industry has too). They can also add warnings about gambling responsibly and links to help if it’s required.

But they aren’t voluntarily doing this or acting responsibly because they are making too much money.

Remember, it’s not just EA or swtor that has gambling mechanics in games. Many PC and mobile app games have gambling based mechanics or loot boxes and I think the industry and government are playing catch-up to regulate what is an ever changing line in the sand.

The gaming companies should not be self regulating this. The same as you don’t let the alcohol and gambling industries self regulate. If we did there would be massive social problems.

If there was regulation, then everyone knows the limits on what is acceptable behaviour.

As for events like the nightlife one in swtor. This can be mitigated too by actually announcing that it is a gambling event and limiting those accounts that have players under the age of 18 from participating in the gambling part. Then make it more skill based and also add odds of what it takes to get certain prizes (that is something the gambling industries have to do).

I don’t think providing the players with the actual odds in winning any gambling type mechanic is too much to ask for because casinos do it, poker machines do it (at least in Australia) and lotteries do it.

It would be a good step in the right direction and show that the industry is willing to be more transparent on these sorts of issues. Maybe if they had done that all along, this wouldn’t have blown up in their faces so much.

I don't understand all the uproar over loot boxes.

 

Trading cards have been around forever and packs and boxes are basically just physical loot boxes. Why no uproar over those?

There is no meaningful difference other than the fact that the easier you make gambling, the easier it is to grab addicts. There’s been uproar for many years — https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB846202501868224000

I strongly feel that loot boxes with random rewards and amplifiers should be removed from the game. It does not matter that they can be purchased with a virtual currency since the entire game economy is driven by real world money and the raw mechanics are clearly games of chance. There is no reason at all that the items you get from these things can not be put up for direct purchase as in-game vendors and the Cartel Market are both already well established.

I saw the point made earlier that everything in the game is gambling as fighting a boss uses a load of random games of chance logic but I feel that is akin to taking a chance walking across a busy road or taking part in a competitive sport. Most things in life involve taking a chance. Maybe boss fights/repair costs etc are a more surreptitious way of encouraging gambling but for me at least, they still feel a far shot from directly saying "pay us something of value to have a random chance of winning". It's a different kind of rush and it really comes down to where people draw the line in the sand.

If you use a slot machine that takes money then it is gambling. If you replace the money with tokens then it is still gambling.

I strongly feel that loot boxes with random rewards and amplifiers should be removed from the game. It does not matter that they can be purchased with a virtual currency since the entire game economy is driven by real world money and the raw mechanics are clearly games of chance. There is no reason at all that the items you get from these things can not be put up for direct purchase as in-game vendors and the Cartel Market are both already well established.

 

I saw the point made earlier that everything in the game is gambling as fighting a boss uses a load of random games of chance logic but I feel that is akin to taking a chance walking across a busy road or taking part in a competitive sport. Most things in life involve taking a chance. Maybe boss fights/repair costs etc are a more surreptitious way of encouraging gambling but for me at least, they still feel a far shot from directly saying "pay us something of value to have a random chance of winning". It's a different kind of rush and it really comes down to where people draw the line in the sand.

 

If you use a slot machine that takes money then it is gambling. If you replace the money with tokens then it is still gambling.

Fighting a boss isn't as random as people may believe. There's some elements of chance in there but it's scripted just the same. What's random is your group more than anything.

What makes it different however is if you were to have to pay for the attempt at bosses each time. So a subscription model with general benefits isn't such a payment since it's a one-time fee per month. You can attempt as many times to kill a boss as you want in that month but let's say that each attempt you have is to be paid for and the outcome of it is random. You see, the outcome of a boss fight for a good group isn't random.

I strongly feel that loot boxes with random rewards and amplifiers should be removed from the game. It does not matter that they can be purchased with a virtual currency since the entire game economy is driven by real world money and the raw mechanics are clearly games of chance. There is no reason at all that the items you get from these things can not be put up for direct purchase as in-game vendors and the Cartel Market are both already well established.

 

I saw the point made earlier that everything in the game is gambling as fighting a boss uses a load of random games of chance logic but I feel that is akin to taking a chance walking across a busy road or taking part in a competitive sport. Most things in life involve taking a chance. Maybe boss fights/repair costs etc are a more surreptitious way of encouraging gambling but for me at least, they still feel a far shot from directly saying "pay us something of value to have a random chance of winning". It's a different kind of rush and it really comes down to where people draw the line in the sand.

 

If you use a slot machine that takes money then it is gambling. If you replace the money with tokens then it is still gambling.

Slot machine mechanics should definitely be removed from all games. Loot boxes and RNG reward mechanics need to be removed or reduced as well. But if they intent to keep those last two mechanics, then they should have to publish the odds of winning.

https://au.ign.com/articles/heres-how-loot-box-addiction-destroys-lives

This new article is interesting with regards to how loot box mechanics destroy lives.

Part of the problem is that they didn't make the game sustainable on the Subscription model. - In hindsight that was their biggest error.

So they introduced F2P and the hybrid model between that and full sub, but to pay for it they needed a revenue stream and quickly if the game was to survive.

However, they doubled down on some poor decisions and took the game and story in a direction that a proportion of the playerbase didn't like.

I accept that there is always going to be a turnover of players in a game. That's a given.

However at the same time, mobile games were using in-game purchases to make money and its a logical step to follow suit, from a purely business point of view.

But there's an obvious disconnect between making a game that everyone wants to be part of and letting the money roll in, or making a game for a small population and having to squeeze them every which way to keep it running. - I personally would prefer the former.

I think that sometime soon there'll be a reckoning with gambling/lootbox/surprise mechanics. - the US may be a step behind but the EU seem to be hot on this kind of thing. And companies can't hide behind simply renaming gambling as something else for much longer.

Gambling is still gambling whether its for real money or game currency or currency bought with real money. Most people can show some self restraint, but unfortunately like a lot of addictions, some people cant, because it's a form of mental illness. Grooming people to gamble and taking advantage of them for profit is certainly questionable, if not immoral.

I sometimes wonder what SWTOR would have been like if they'd kept up the consistent excellent storytelling and content, and promoted it strongly when the last few SW movies came out, and invested in the game and fixed a lot of the issues - bugs, glitches, patches after an update and general QA.

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.

Its wise to always convert CC to your home currency since everything is based on USD then not withstanding their site says "Total is VAT/GST inclusive where applicable" it is still added on. (And conversion to CAD sucks) Then we have to look at the discounted price of many 'desirable' items that are perma-discounted - to me its not at all discounted, it is the regular price, just making you think its some sort of deal. So those nice armour sets or weapons suddenly seem rather ridiculously priced. Like folks mentioned before its only pixels: the price to make one is the same as the price to make 10,000.

Its not that they would lose money lowering prices (if indeed they would ever 'lose' on pixel items), its that they would make profit slower. Would I buy more (some) from the market if the prices had a real honest price reduction? Maybe, but for now I make do with what I obtain by playing.

I liked GW2; once you have a dye colour, every char has the dye colour.

I liked GW2; once you have a dye colour, every char has the dye colour.

I don't like this idea....I love it, and I'm sure most of the people here would too, but it'd be bad for BW, as a lot of people pay for the dyes, either for themselves or to sell on the gtn, they'd see a big fall in their cc's sales

I haven't bought cc's since probably when they first came out, I let my free & ref ones build up, and normally use them on unlocks during the unlock sale, or if I really want something unlocked, and there's no sale due.

Although, last years summer sale was a bonanza, I think i spent most of my cc reserves on extra deco's I liked, that were gone way to expensive on the gtn.

Basically, although we'd love them to lower prices, if they did, people would expect it again, and again, etc, as welll as better sales, etc. In the end they probably would see a big drop in profits.....

BUT a big summer sale is ALWAYS a great idea....HINT HINT :D