please end mystery boxes (loot boxes, glorified gambling)

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Sickness wrote:

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Xavathos wrote:

Yeah, stash tabs, as in, actual stash tabs. Not special ones. Everyone knows special tabs save you time, that's their entire purpose. Now can we please keep it on topic here? I'm reporting the next one who attacks me.

Your admission that specifically premium tabs are P2W is good enough for me. Thank you.

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Xavathos wrote:

In your words, sure. But wasn't that always the case from the start, Sickness bro? I don't think anything changed here, as is tradition on these boards.

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NemoJr wrote:

So here's how it works:

- A player makes a thread about the 'elephant in the room'
- Fanboys rush to the rescue
- Counter-arguments
- Discussion gets bogged down in semantics, as players keep trying (and failing) to agree on the exact definition of the term "pay-to-win"
- Things get heated
- People on the 'losing side' of the discussion start reporting others for harassment or somesuch, attracting Support's attention to the thread
- Thread gets locked for 'going off-topic'


Huh... Reminds me of politics, for some reason.

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Xtorma wrote:

Most people don't even bother thinking about this, but i'll give you an example of gambling that is not illegal gambling because of the way the law is worded. In the US we have all seen it. Heck, I have even seen it when I took my niece and nephew to Disney world.

Carnival games. If you didn't look at them very closely, or were not familiar with the law, then these games fit all the legal criteria to be gambling, and prey on all the negative emotional responses everyone is up in arms against. They actually have cases of people loosing everything they own just to get a certain prize ($6000 giant banana you could buy on ebay for $35). They are not age restricted. They are seldom regulated. Anyone ever wonder why that is?

It's because they claim to be games of skill and not chance. That is only one way to get around the written law, and still use those evil psychological triggers to enrich yourself.

This is just an example as to why I think loot boxes or some form of them will be around for a very long time.

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Xtorma wrote:

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gibbousmoon wrote:

I'll simplify this:

Loot boxes are the most effective way to leverage the sunk-cost fallacy against anyone who wants to buy multiple loot boxes.

See, it works like this: The first few pieces of a set are easy to get, because of the way the numbers work. Then, the closer you get to completing your set, the harder it is to get that last piece. But you already bought 10 boxes; surely it's time for this 11th box to pay out, right?

Does this sound familiar to anyone? If you have ever struggled with gambling, then of course it fucking sounds familiar.

It's just a shitty sales tactic, period. You don't need to be addicted to gambling to be affected by it.

It's awesome for those of us who are not affected by it. I happen to be one of those people, because I'm lucky enough to already understand the psychology that is being leveraged against me. Doesn't make it any less shitty for the company doing it.

If they offered a max number of loot-box purchases (it could even be somewhat high, like 5 or more), then all you people crowing about the need for freedom to buy a few of these things would be kept happy.

But doing so would keep them from making extra money by exploiting whales, gambling addicts, and anyone deceived by their own sunk-cost thinking, so guess what will actually happen?

Well, we'll see. Depends on how much autonomy GGG truly retains from its new masters, and furthermore how much they care about ethical business.

according to the research papers I read (on your suggestion) the entire game is designed to groom susceptible people toward buying those boxes. The root problem isn't the boxes, it's the game itself. The game sows the seeds ,and the boxes are the harvest.

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Johny_Snow wrote:

Wait wait, did I read that right? Having less stash tabs saves time? So a guy with the 4 vanilla ones is better off than having the currency, essence, map, etc because their number increases and he'll need more time to sort them out?

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vio wrote:

an example:

the goal of "winning the game" is at beating shaper. two guys with equal skills start. one guy has 4, the other one 100 premium tabs, both have to use all their available tabs to the fullest extent to have the issue on question comparable.

you're seriously suggesting the guy with 100 tabs is the first beating shaper?

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things are only different if you understand "winning" as ending up as the richest guy of a league.

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vio wrote:

one guy selling a 10ex item through a forum entry (which is advertised in exactly the same way as a premium tab entry) makes more currency than me selling stuff from 10 quads during a whole league.

also, you don't need most of the currency that drops. i got a essence tab where i
dump stuff and at the end of the league i got out one highest tier essence from 4 of all essence types. useless.

pay to win implies that the more you spend the more you win. there is no diminishing returns in pay to win elements of those games that have them cause they want you to buy more and more cause that's how they make a profit.


stash tabs don't have that. you buy more, you play slower.

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of course, a currency and a map tab make handling much easier. maybe the game should drop that "free to play", charge 80$ upfront and grant players a currency tab, a map tab and 4 additionally premiums.

hopefully then the pay to win discussion would find an end.

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Miská wrote:

Some people really don't understand what off-topic means. This thread should be locked to prevent stupids from continueing nonsense off-topic blabber.