Looty & "Keep"? - The Bear and Badger

JonB

Dark Soldier wrote:

My confession: I'm getting rid of Fifa 18 because I spunked £150 in total on FUT since release (lied in the thread due to that darling shame), and I could see it being way more. I had a gambling addiction when younger (fruit machines like a mug) and could feel the same pull with Fifa Points, the risk/reward. Was starting to justify in my head spending £50 every couple weeks on points for packs, which as anyone knows it won't just be £50 after a short while. And this from someone who doesn't even play it online, so it was completely pointless. So either I'm a mug for not just going nah mate I won't bother, or such things are fucking ridiculous for those with the inclination. If I'd been unemployed still, bye bye my benefits each week. Its why I never used to buy Fifa, and why I won't again

Damn, that's awful. I don't really know how FUT works, but I just find it ridiculous that it's possible to spend that much in game and there still be potential to spend much more. After you've already bought the game how does, say, £50 not get you everything else in it? It's fucking toxic.

I don't think I've bought anything published by EA in recent few years anyway, but I'll make sure I don't now.

g.man

Good on you for seeing the problem and binning it mate.

Olimite

The scary thing is that compared to others, he has spent very little.

afgavinstan

Mmmm. Food for thought. Apologies if my chat/journey lit dormant flames, mate.

Dark Soldier

JonB wrote:

My confession: I'm getting rid of Fifa 18 because I spunked £150 in total on FUT since release (lied in the thread due to that darling shame), and I could see it being way more. I had a gambling addiction when younger (fruit machines like a mug) and could feel the same pull with Fifa Points, the risk/reward. Was starting to justify in my head spending £50 every couple weeks on points for packs, which as anyone knows it won't just be £50 after a short while. And this from someone who doesn't even play it online, so it was completely pointless. So either I'm a mug for not just going nah mate I won't bother, or such things are fucking ridiculous for those with the inclination. If I'd been unemployed still, bye bye my benefits each week. Its why I never used to buy Fifa, and why I won't again

Damn, that's awful. I don't really know how FUT works, but I just find it ridiculous that it's possible to spend that much in game and there still be potential to spend much more. After you've already bought the game how does, say, £50 not get you everything else in it? It's fucking toxic.

I don't think I've bought anything published by EA in recent few years anyway, but I'll make sure I don't now.

Basically £50 gets you 80 of the most expensive packs in game, which all contain at the very least three gold card players. Gold card players being the most valuable. You also get fitness cards and other guff. So open the pack, and you might get absolute shit that's worth nothing for in-game money (say 700 for a player), or there's a very slight chance you might get a God roll pack and get a player worth between 30k and 2mil. Of course the odds of getting the latter are very, very slim.

Its the typical loop of open pack, get shit, think next one I might hit the kacpot, open another. If you hit the jackpot you think your luck is in, so you open more. Problem was any good players I was getting I was selling to raise my in game money which inevitably I' then spend on more packs and so the cycle continues.

If you're not inclined towards gambling its easily avoided, if you are inclined, one little punt and its down the rabbit hole you go.

Dark Soldier

afgavinstan wrote:

Mmmm. Food for thought. Apologies if my chat/journey lit dormant flames, mate.

Nah its all good man, not gonna be bothered by what others do, just a lil bit of a warning for ya!

Escape

g.man wrote:

Sonuvabitch — I had that link primed on my clipboard! I was just going through to see if I was clear to land.

I don't know what these boxes are, though. Only that @Roujin somehow bought one and fell on his arse wearing its bundled socks. So, y'know, mixed feelings.

mistercrayon

Mail loot crates are the biggest con in the world (figuratively)

JonB

Dark Soldier wrote:

Basically £50 gets you 80 of the most expensive packs in game, which all contain at the very least three gold card players. Gold card players being the most valuable. You also get fitness cards and other guff. So open the pack, and you might get absolute shit that's worth nothing for in-game money (say 700 for a player), or there's a very slight chance you might get a God roll pack and get a player worth between 30k and 2mil. Of course the odds of getting the latter are very, very slim. Its the typical loop of open pack, get shit, think next one I might hit the kacpot, open another. If you hit the jackpot you think your luck is in, so you open more. Problem was any good players I was getting I was selling to raise my in game money which inevitably I' then spend on more packs and so the cycle continues. If you're not inclined towards gambling its easily avoided, if you are inclined, one little punt and its down the rabbit hole you go.

Yeah, it's almost the exact same thing as gambling addiction and the amounts of money involved are really significant now. At least when we collected footy stickers it was just pocket money prices.

Also, I can't believe the money going into FUT isn't negatively affecting the sales of other games. FIFA has always been big, but it's become an absolute monster in recent years.

Yossarian

I’d suggest that your belief comes from your own spending on games, which I don’t think is very typical.

Escape

Dark Soldier wrote:

Was starting to justify in my head spending £50 every couple weeks on points for packs, which as anyone knows it won't just be £50 after a short while.

And you didn't even get a good pastry chef. Remember when arcades weren't wall-to-wall fruities? £1 games were the first looters; yer McCrees.

Paul the sparky

Wrong thread.

Escape

I don't get your point, Yoss? I'm probably atypical — I only buy a couple of standards every year, but if Tekken 8 wanted more wedge for half of its mans then I'd bin it.

But we're from a better time, and I imagine the young are also propping up lost sales from us oldies in cinemas and the like. That's the insidiousness of it all — youths are vulnerable. We can huff and puff but the loothouse stays up.

[edit]

I'm not against paying for additional features, such as Tekken Ball or Gran Turismo 6's GPS app. A few quid for each. Strong proviso that there really wasn't enough time for inclusion at launch.

mistercrayon

It still is notionally pocket money prices but credit is not limited in real time as an actual pound in the pocket.

Escape

mistercrayon wrote:

pocket money prices

Posho! That's half a dozen market trainers for a virtual pack of Panini.

JonB

Yossarian wrote:

I’d suggest that your belief comes from your own spending on games, which I don’t think is very typical.

Seems like common sense to me, and I don't think you know what's typical any more than I do.

Escape

Arguments.

Yossarian

‘Scape, you’re on a pretty fixed income so that’s one thing, Jon, you buy far more games than most people.

I expect I’m more typical in how I approach things, I reckon I probably spend something in the region of £200-£250 on games per year, some years a bit more, some a bit less. I could easily spend more if I wanted to, but I’d rather spend my other disposable income on other things. I think this is how most people view buying games.

Were I to decide that I wanted to get into FUT, say, and I started buying card packs for that, it wouldn’t affect the small amount I spend on games each year, it would come out of my other disposable income. I’m sure some need to budget more carefully and for them it might be different, but I think that most people who buy games spend a small enough on them that they aren’t likely to be overly concerned about it and have other cash that they could put towards gaming instead of a meal or a night at the pub or whatever.

Yossarian

This is from a couple of years ago, but the average gamer in the States was spending $80 per year on games in 2015:

http://gearnuke.com/us-gamers-spend-8x-average-chinese-gamers-video-game-software/

Dark Soldier

That's that solved then, loot boxes are fine. Next.

Yossarian

I’m not even particularly arguing that they’re fine, just that they aren’t this great and unique evil that are going to turn kids and adults into gambling addicts and ruin videogaming.

Dark Soldier

Ah so the conflicting argument because.

Never change Yossmeister.

bad_hair_day

It's ruined Battlefront 2 for me and turned DS to prostitution, again.

Yossarian

Dark Soldier wrote:

Ah so the conflicting argument because...

People are overreacting to their very existence, IMO.

M0stly harm13ss

Yossarian wrote:

Were I to decide that I wanted to get into FUT, say, and I started buying card packs for that, it wouldn’t affect the small amount I spend on games each year, it would come out of my other disposable income. I’m sure some need to budget more carefully and for them it might be different, but I think that most people who buy games spend a small enough on them that they aren’t likely to be overly concerned about it and have other cash that they could put towards gaming instead of a meal or a night at the pub or whatever.

I agree with the majority of your opinions Yoss but IMO you are veering into ‘I don’t have a problem, therefore there isn’t a problem’ territory here.

For the majority of society, yes, a loot box or pack of FUT cards is a shrug and a ‘meh’, but their accessibility either within the game or store, and the ease with which credit can be loaded to an account, or a card charged means that for some (as DS bravely admitted) they are a potential issue. This isn’t a nanny state thing, this is managing the risk and protecting the vulnerable from a very sophisticated marketing strategy designed to maximise the income from each client.

M0stly harm13ss

And also at a base level, the removal of features from a game to be sold separately thus reducing the value of the product delivered in the first place.

Yossarian

Again, I’m happy to reconsider this argument in the face of evidence that this has been causing these sorts of issues, but I still have trouble believing that people who are at risk of getting addicted to gambling will be getting addicted to loot crates over and above actual gambling which can offer them actual money.

g.man

Jesus wept Yoss. Walk away.

EvilRedEye

For many game types, microtransactions represent paying to reduce, or attempt to reduce, uncertainty of outcome in the game. This ultimately affects the enjoyability of the game since uncertainty of outcome is what makes the game fun to play.

M0stly harm13ss

I think gambling addiction is classified as a potential impulse control disorder, so it’s more behavioural than driven by money (more about the buzz of winning than the actual amounts). However this is something I remember reading a fair while ago so apologies if I’m talking complete rubbish.

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