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As a kid I used to play the Yu-Gi-Oh trading card game a lot, and the odds for getting cards of certain rarities were published on the packaging so you knew how

As a kid I used to play the Yu-Gi-Oh trading card game a lot, and the odds for getting cards of certain rarities were published on the packaging so you knew how many packs on average it would take to hit a super rare/ultra rare card. There were 8 commons and one rare slot per pack which had a 1:5 chance of being a super rare, 1:12 for an ultra rare, and 1:23 for a secret rare.[0] Additionally the cards had actual utility where the rarest cards often had better effects than commons and decks would be built around these rarer cards to be used in a duel. For games like Fortnite where the items in the lootboxes are purely cosmetic, the kids who are playing know that they aren't getting any competitive advantages with different skins in playing. However this becomes a bit murkier in games like FIFA and Star Wars Battlefront 2, where the rarest items from lootboxes contained items that were better than those obtained through leveling up alone. The article says that "92 percent of the FIFA boxes are not bought with real money, but unlocked via football matches and are therefore simply part of the game of skill." which implies players can expect to get a reasonable number of good players to build a team with and a team constructed of said players on aggregate would not provide a significant competitive advantage. My opinion is that players should spend time in games because they consider it to be fun rather than to be the best for the sake of being the best, and the in-game whales who spend the most $ on a game shouldn't be overpowered to the point where free to play players should feel they need to spend money to win. [0] https://yugioh.fandom.com/wiki/Booster_Pack https://yugioh.fandom.com/wiki/Booster_Pack

firekvz 5y ago
> My opinion is that players should spend time in games because they consider it to be fun rather than to be the best for the sake of being the best, and the in-game whales who spend the most $ on a game shouldn't be overpowered to the point where free to play players should feel they need to spend money to win. this is very debateable all games have (egaming and regular sports) have a competitive level, you always start playing for the fun, then you either become bored or you realize that you are good and want to start playing vs people with your same or more level of skill/ability, and thats where monetization comes. You talk about whales being able to pay for the best cards/items/etc in a game, but those usually get quickly demoralized as having overpowered stats/items/etc doesn't mean you can enter competitive skill inmediatly, it's easy for people in those games ti quickly identificate players who bought their way to the pro scene of the game, usually called pay to win players and defeat them I see it as something that needs to happen, in the past I've been the one in the other side of the trade, mostly in MMORPGS, where I was able to farm/craft/bot for really rare/unique items and sell to those willing to pay thousands of USD for them and yet, beat them in regular matches/pvp/etc, so it somehow encouraged the economy inside the game, and kept actual pro gamers happy, kept devs happy, kept the general population happy, the only ones really unhappy were the ones that paid for the items and got sad when it really didnt help of course, I understand that it should be regulated and not to make it fully stupid, but well, at the end, all of this things keep people invested and interested in games, otherwise, they would generally just die.
slg 5y ago
>The article says that "92 percent of the FIFA boxes are not bought with real money, but unlocked via football matches and are therefore simply part of the game of skill." which implies players can expect to get a reasonable number of good players to build a team with and a team constructed of said players on aggregate would not provide a significant competitive advantage. It has been years since I played FIFA so maybe things have changed, but this quote is misleading which means the implication you got from it is incorrect. The FIFA lootboxes aren't uniform. There is a wide variety of different packs and they all have different odds and come with different costs. It is very easy to earn the cheapest versions with the worst odds. No one spends real money on those. The real money proportionally will go to the more expensive packs with the best odds and therefore can lead to an imbalance in play because those 8% of packs account for much more than 8% of the rewarded value.

firekvz 5y ago

> My opinion is that players should spend time in games because they consider it to be fun rather than to be the best for the sake of being the best, and the in-game whales who spend the most $ on a game shouldn't be overpowered to the point where free to play players should feel they need to spend money to win. this is very debateable all games have (egaming and regular sports) have a competitive level, you always start playing for the fun, then you either become bored or you realize that you are good and want to start playing vs people with your same or more level of skill/ability, and thats where monetization comes. You talk about whales being able to pay for the best cards/items/etc in a game, but those usually get quickly demoralized as having overpowered stats/items/etc doesn't mean you can enter competitive skill inmediatly, it's easy for people in those games ti quickly identificate players who bought their way to the pro scene of the game, usually called pay to win players and defeat them I see it as something that needs to happen, in the past I've been the one in the other side of the trade, mostly in MMORPGS, where I was able to farm/craft/bot for really rare/unique items and sell to those willing to pay thousands of USD for them and yet, beat them in regular matches/pvp/etc, so it somehow encouraged the economy inside the game, and kept actual pro gamers happy, kept devs happy, kept the general population happy, the only ones really unhappy were the ones that paid for the items and got sad when it really didnt help of course, I understand that it should be regulated and not to make it fully stupid, but well, at the end, all of this things keep people invested and interested in games, otherwise, they would generally just die.

slg 5y ago

>The article says that "92 percent of the FIFA boxes are not bought with real money, but unlocked via football matches and are therefore simply part of the game of skill." which implies players can expect to get a reasonable number of good players to build a team with and a team constructed of said players on aggregate would not provide a significant competitive advantage. It has been years since I played FIFA so maybe things have changed, but this quote is misleading which means the implication you got from it is incorrect. The FIFA lootboxes aren't uniform. There is a wide variety of different packs and they all have different odds and come with different costs. It is very easy to earn the cheapest versions with the worst odds. No one spends real money on those. The real money proportionally will go to the more expensive packs with the best odds and therefore can lead to an imbalance in play because those 8% of packs account for much more than 8% of the rewarded value.